In a large Visual Studio solution, how can I quickly identify the projects with build events?

Question

I have a fairly large Visual Studio solution (> 30 projects). Every time I start a debugging session, the whole solution is recompiled. I vaguely remember that one of the projects has some xcopy post-build event, and I know from past experience that this can trigger solution recompilations even when not necessary. So I would like to remove that build event and replace it with a different mechanism.

Unfortunately I cannot remember exactly which project has the build event, and I would like to avoid having to manually open each project's Properties pages and look for a build event.

Is there an automated way for identifying all the projects in a solution that have some build event defined?

Answer 1

You can use the following regular expression in Find In Files to search all the csproj/vbproj files inside your solution directory for PreBuildEvent or PostBuildEvent which isn't followed by a newline character (assuming you didn't put a line break at the start of the build event textbox). Don't forget to tick the "Use Regular Expressions" checkbox:

(Pre|Post)BuildEvent\>[^\r]

Here is what my Find In Files dialog looks like: