Batch build does nothing in Visual Studio 2017

Question

We've just migrated our IDE from Visual Studio 2010 to Visual Studio 2017, although projects are going to be kept with Visual Studio 2010's toolset for a time (a lot of external dependencies are not compatible with Visual Studio 2017 yet). All are C++ projects.

My current problem is that the Batch build is doing nothing: I launch it, select all the projects and none of the three options (Build, Rebuild, Clean) does anything.

How do I fix it? Maybe it is just a bug of Visual Studio 2017?

---

• Visual Studio 2017 version: 15.2 (26430.6), no newer updates are available

• Output window after executing the batch build:

  ========== Build: 0 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

---

Things I've tried

• A similar issue is reported in the visualstudio.com forum and has no answers yet.

• I've already tried disabling the faster project load option (menu Options → Text Editor → C/C++ → Experimental → Enable Faster Project Load), as suggested in this post and nothing.

• This other post in the same forum reported the problem in Visual Studio 2017 15.1, and it was supposedly solved in 15.2, but, again, nothing.

---

Update: the issue is still present in latest 15.2 version (26430.12).

Answer 1

Delete the *.pdb files in the solution folder and try the batch building again. This is the only solution that works for me.

Answer 2

I apologize: it seems that I didn't follow the instructions of the second solution listed in the question (this one) correctly. In conclusion:

Disabling the Lightweight Solution Load actually fixed the problem.

Faster Project Load is not the same as Lightweight Solution Load.

On the other hand, disabling this feature will increase the load time of your solution (it will depend on the size of projects) but, at least for me, that's better compared with manually building dozens of independent projects for several configurations.

---

Here are two ways to disable it:

• Per-solution: Right-click on the solution and the choose the Disable Lightweight Solution Load. It is a bit confusing because it doesn't have any feedback; the solution title keeps displaying the lightweight suffix, and if you right-click again on it the button still says Disable. You have to close the project and loaded again.

  

• Globally: Go to menu Tools → Options → Projects and Solutions → General, and uncheck Lightweight solution load for all solutions. Again, re-load your solutions.