Compilation fails randomly: “cannot open program database”

Question

During a long compilation with Visual Studio 2005 (version 8.0.50727.762), I sometimes get the following error in several files in some project:

fatal erro         


        

Answer 1

This happens to me consistently if I Ctrl+Break to cancel a build (vs2015). There's some process that isn't shut down properly. I went on a rampage "End Tasking" ms/vs related processes (look for duplicates) and my build worked again. A restart would probably work too. As would moving to gnu binutils.

Annoyingly unlocker tools don't report any processes locking the file, windows doesn't let me delete the .pdb but I can rename it. My guess is two processes jump in at the same time during a build.