Visual studio: disable web development server for some web projects

Question

I'm working on a web platform which uses ASP.NET MVC and supports plugins. In this platform, each plugin is a folder under /Plugins folder. For example, plugin A's virtual path is /Plugins/PluginA.

In development, one plugin is one separated asp.net mvc web application. To make plugin development easier. I create plugin projects in the same solution where the main project (the platform) is in. At runtime, the platform will dynamically load the assemblies in the plugin project's bin folder.

The problem is, every time I debug the main project, visual studio will start many web development servers (one for main project, and one for each plugin project).

So if I have 20 plugins, visual studio will start 21 development server. It makes my computer slow. So, if there's a way to disable the development server for plugin projects, that is, let visual studio start only one development server when debugging?

BTW: I still need the intellisence for the Razor views in plugin projects.

Answer 1

Click on the web project that you don't want to start the web dev server, press F4 to bring the properties tab, and there you will find an "Always Start when debugging" option that you should set to false.

Answer 2

There is an extension tool to enable web server for selected project(s)

just right click on your project(s) and choose "Enable web server for selected project only".

multi selection is also supported