What are the various “Build action” settings in Visual Studio project properties and what do they do?

Question

For the most part, you just take whatever Visual Studio sets it for you as a default... I\'m referring to the BuildAction property for each file selected in Solution Explore

Answer 1

In VS2008, the doc entry that seems the most useful is:

Windows Presentation Foundation Building a WPF Application (WPF)

ms-help://MS.VSCC.v90/MS.MSDNQTR.v90.en/wpf_conceptual/html/a58696fd-bdad-4b55-9759-136dfdf8b91c.htm

ApplicationDefinition Identifies the XAML markup file that contains the application definition (a XAML markup file whose root element is Application). ApplicationDefinition is mandatory when Install is true and OutputType is winexe. A WPF application and, consequently, an MSBuild project can only have one ApplicationDefinition.

Page Identifies a XAML markup file whose content is converted to a binary format and compiled into an assembly. Page items are typically implemented in conjunction with a code-behind class.

The most common Page items are XAML files whose top-level elements are one of the following:

Window (System.Windows..::.Window).

Page (System.Windows.Controls..::.Page).

PageFunction (System.Windows.Navigation..::.PageFunction<(Of <(T>)>)).

ResourceDictionary (System.Windows..::.ResourceDictionary).

FlowDocument (System.Windows.Documents..::.FlowDocument).

UserControl (System.Windows.Controls..::.UserControl).

Resource Identifies a resource file that is compiled into an application assembly. As mentioned earlier, UICulture processes Resource items.

Content Identifies a content file that is distributed with an application. Metadata that describes the content file is compiled into the application (using AssemblyAssociatedContentFileAttribute).