Multi-core compiling in Visual Studio

Multi-core compiling in Visual Studio

You might already know this, but this is for those of you that want to compile extra-fast on your multi-core beast.  Bet you didn’t know that by default, most versions of Visual Studio do NOT use multi-core compiling.  So, to turn it on, do this in visual studio:

Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run > maximum number of parallel project builds

Set this to the number of cores you have (or the number of cores you have -1 if you want to do things on your desktop while compiling extra-big things).

To see if it’s working, when you compile, in the compiler output window at the bottom you should see each line prefixed by a number like this:
1>blahblah
4>blahblah
3>blahblah

Those prefix numbers tell you which ‘core’ the message is coming from.  I find this speeds up your compile times dramatically – especially on large projects.  Give it a try!

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