How does Visual Studio know my project is up to date so it can skip running MSBuild?

Question

I have a custom MSBuild target included in my C++ project that produces a data file in the $(OutDir) folder for each item of a given item type. I have the item type hooked u

Answer 1

You can find out why a project is being rebuilt by enabling the verbosity of the fast up to date checker in the registry key:

New-ItemProperty              `
 -Name U2DCheckVerbosity      `
 -PropertyType DWORD -Value 1 `
 -Path HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\General -Force

You should be able to see in the build log messages like

Project 'Caliburn.Micro.Silverlight.Extensions' is not up to date. Project item 'C:\dev\projects\Caliburn.Micro.Silverlight.Extensions\NavigationBootstrapperSample.cs.pp' has 'Copy to Output Directory' attribute set to 'Copy always'.

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/kirillosenkov/2014/08/04/how-to-investigate-rebuilding-in-visual-studio-when-nothing-has-changed/