Active configuration

[groupw_bench]

I'm using IVF in the Visual Studio 2005 environment, and I'm confused about how to switch between projects. I have two projects in my "solution". When I click the project properties selection, I see that Project 2 Release is the active configuration. In the list in the Configuration window I see other Project 2 build options.

I want to change the active project to Project 1. So I open the Configuration Manager, and select Project 1 Release in the Active Solution Configuration window. In the list below, I make sure Project 1 Release is the configuration shown for Project 1. I close the Configuration Manager and re-open the project properties, and find that Project 2 Release is still the active configuration. I open both project properties and Configuration Manager and find that the active configuration is Project 2 release in project properties, and Project 1 Release in Configuration manager. If I build a project or search for text in the project, Project 2 is built or searched.

The documentation seems to say that I can change the active project (that is, the one that gets built or searched) with the Configuration Manager. Obviously this isn't so. So how do I change the active project?

[groupw_bench]

I just re-started Visual Studio 2005 after it was shut down for a while. Now, I am able to change the active configuration with Configuration Manager, and it's behaving just like I thought it should. Apparently this is a bug, maybe in Visual Studio.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

First, when you build a solution, ALL projects in the solution get built. Perhaps what you're referring to as the "active project" is what VS calls the "startup project", which is the one that is run or debugged. You set the startup project by right clicking on the desired project and selecting "Set as startup project".

You don't need to switch this just to work on a project - you can right click on any project to set its properties and if you want to build (or run) only one project, right click on the project and select one of the "project only" options.

Configurations are typically changed on a per-solution basis. I usually use the configuration dropdown in the toolbar to change between Release and Debug. You can create additional configurations in the configuration manager (useful, for example, to create an x64 configuration.)

Does this help?