Difference between Build Solution Rebuild Solution and Clean Solution in Visual Studio

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What is the difference between Build Solution  Rebuild Solution  and Clean Solution in Visual Studio   When is the appropriate time to use each one of these

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Build Solution - Builds any assemblies which have changed files  If an assembly has no changes  it won t be re-built  Also will not delete any intermediate files   Used most commonly   Rebuild Solution - Rebuilds all assemblies regardless of changes but leaves intermediate files   Used when you notice that Visual Studio didn t incorporate your changes in the latest assembly  Sometimes Visual Studio does make mistakes   Clean Solution - Delete all intermediate files   Used when all else fails and you need to clean everything up and start fresh

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I have a a blank solution BuildRebuildClean and three class library Models Repository Notification   I use Models and Repository in Notification class library   Then    Build solution Incremental build and compiles only the files that are changed  If an assembly has no changes  it won   t be re-built  Also  it will not delete any intermediate files  If Modify some code in Models library project  then BUILD solution   In the below screen shot  refer to the time stamp of DLL  EXE is updated in Models and Notification library       Rebuild solution Deletes all compiled files and compiles all irrespective of changes   ignoring anything it   s done before  Right click on the solution name BuildRebuildClean  What it does is deletes all the assemblies  EXEs and referred files to compile again       Clean Solution Deletes all compiled  intermediate files  i e   EXEs and DLLs  from the bin obj directory

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This is concerning  Build Solution  option only   I got totally fed up with Visual Studio s inability to really clean solutions and wrote this little tool that will do it for you   Close your solution in VS first and drag its folder from Windows Explorer into this app or into its icon  Depending on the setting at the bottom of its window  it can also remove additional stuff  that will help if you try to manually upload your solution to GitHub or share it with someone else     In a nutshell  it will place all  Debug  folders  Intellisense  and other caches that can be rebuilt by VS into Recycle Bin for you

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Build Solution - Build solution will build your application with building the number of projects which are having any file change  And it does not clear any existing binary files and just replacing updated assemblies in bin or obj folder   Rebuild Solution - Rebuild solution will build your entire application with building all the projects are available in your solution with cleaning them  Before building it clears all the binary files from bin and obj folder   Clean Solution - Clean solution is just clears all the binary files from bin and obj folder

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I just think of Rebuild as performing the Clean first followed by the Build   Perhaps I am wrong     comments

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All I know is a Clean does not do what  make clean  used to do - if I Clean a solution I would expect it delete obj and bin files folders such that it builds like is was a fresh checkout of the source   In my experience though I often find times where a Clean and Build or Rebuild still produces strange errors on source that is known to compile and what is required is a manual deletion of the bin obj folders  then it will build

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Build solution will perform an incremental build  if it doesn t think it needs to rebuild a project  it won t  It may also use partially-built bits of the project if they haven t changed  I don t know how far it takes this  Rebuild solution will clean and then build the solution from scratch  ignoring anything it s done before  The difference between this and  Clean  followed by Build  is that Rebuild will clean-then-build each project  one at a time  rather than cleaning all and then building all  Clean solution will remove the build artifacts from the previous build  If there are any other files in the build target directories  bin and obj  they may not be removed  but actual build artifacts are  I ve seen behaviour for this vary - sometimes deleting fairly thoroughly and sometimes not - but I ll give VS the benefit of the doubt for the moment       The links are to the devenv exe command line switches  but they do the same as the menu items

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Build solution only builds those projects which have changed in the solution  and does not effect assemblies that have not changed   ReBuild first cleans  all the assemblies from the solution and then builds entire solution regardless of changes done   Clean  simply cleans the solution

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Build solution  Compiles code files  DLL and EXE  which are changed   Rebuild  Deletes all compiled files and compiles them again irrespective if the code has changed or not   Clean solution  Deletes all compiled files  DLL and EXE file    You can see this YouTube video  Visual Studio Build vs  Rebuild vs  Clean  C  interview questions with answers   where I have demonstrated the differences and below are visual representations which will help you to analyze the same in more detail     The difference between Rebuild vs   Clean   Build   because there seems to be some confusion around this as well   The difference is the way the build and clean sequence happens for every project  Let   s say your solution has two projects     proj1    and    proj2     If you do a rebuild it will take    proj1     clean  delete  the compiled files for    proj1    and build it  After that it will take the second project    proj2     clean compiled files for    proj2    and compile    proj2      But if you do a    clean    and build     it will first delete all compiled files for    proj1    and    proj2    and then it will build    proj1    first followed by    proj2

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Build solution will build any projects in the solution that have changed  Rebuild builds all projects no matter what  clean solution removes all temporary files ensuring that the next build is complete

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The one major thing I think people are leaving out is that Build and Clean are both tasks that are performed based on Visual Studio s knowledge of your Project Solution   I see a lot of complaining that Clean doesn t work or leaves leftover files or is not trustworthy  when in fact  the reasons you say it isn t trustworthy actually makes it more trustworthy   Clean will only remove  clean  files and or directories that Visual Studio or the compiler themselves have in fact created   If you copy your own files or files folder structures get created from an outside tool or source  then Visual Studio doesn t  know they exist  and therefore  should not touch them   Can you imagine if the Clean operation basically performed a  del         This could be catastrophic   Build performs a compile on changed or necessary projects   Rebuild performs a compile regardless of change or what s necessary   Clean removes files folders it has created in the past  but leaves anything that it didn t have anything to do with  initially   I hope this elaborates a bit and helps

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Taken from this link      Build means compile and link only the source files that have changed   since the last build  while Rebuild   means compile and link all source   files regardless of whether they   changed or not  Build is the normal   thing to do and is faster  Sometimes   the versions of project target   components can get out of sync and   rebuild is necessary to make the build   successful  In practice  you never   need to Clean

[visual-studio] Difference between Build Solution, Rebuild Solution, and Clean Solution in Visual Studio?

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