What are the obj and bin folders created by Visual Studio used for

Question

I created a new project in Visual Studio 2010 and noticed that there are now two new folders named obj and bin in my project directory   A similar pair of folders are created when building and debugging - what are these folders for

User · Answer

The obj directory is for intermediate object files and other transient data files that are generated by the compiler or build system during a build  The bin directory is the directory that final output binaries  and any dependencies or other deployable files  will be written to   You can change the actual directories used for both purposes within the project settings  if you like

User · Answer

I would encourage you to see this youtube video which demonstrates the difference between C  bin and obj folders and also explains how we get the benefit of incremental conditional compilation   C  compilation is a two-step process  see the below diagram for more details    Compiling  In compiling phase individual C  code files are compiled into individual compiled units  These individual compiled code files go in the OBJ directory  Linking  In the linking phase these individual compiled code files are linked to create single unit DLL and EXE  This goes in the BIN directory      If you compare both bin and obj directory you will find greater number of files in the  obj  directory as it has individual compiled code files while  bin  has a single unit

User · Answer

The obj folder holds object  or intermediate  files  which are compiled binary files that haven t been linked yet  They re essentially fragments that will be combined to produce the final executable  The compiler generates one object file for each source file  and those files are placed into the obj folder   The bin folder holds binary files  which are the actual executable code for your application or library   Each of these folders are further subdivided into Debug and Release folders  which simply correspond to the project s build configurations  The two types of files discussed above are placed into the appropriate folder  depending on which type of build you perform  This makes it easy for you to determine which executables are built with debugging symbols  and which were built with optimizations enabled and ready for release   Note that you can change where Visual Studio outputs your executable files during a compile in your project s Properties  You can also change the names and selected options for your build configurations

User · Answer

One interesting fact about the obj directory  If you have publishing set up in a web project  the files that will be published are staged to obj Release Package PackageTmp  If you want to publish the files yourself rather than use the integrated VS feature  you can grab the files that you actually need to deploy here  rather than pick through all the digital debris in the bin directory

User · Answer

Be careful with setup projects if you re using them  Visual Studio setup projects Primary Output pulls from the obj folder rather than the bin   I was releasing applications I thought were obfuscated and signed in msi setups for quite a while before I discovered that the deployed application files were actually neither obfuscated nor signed as I as performing the post-build procedure on the bin folder assemblies and should have been targeting the obj folder assemblies instead   This is far from intuitive imho  but the general setup approach is to use the Primary Output of the project and this is the obj folder  I d love it if someone could shed some light on this btw

[visual-studio] What are the obj and bin folders (created by Visual Studio) used for?

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