Visual Studio Does Not Rebuild After Modifying Header

Symptoms

With Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, the Build command does not re-compile any sources even though a header file in the project was modified.

Cause

Microsoft Visual Studio fails to record dependency information when preprocessing is performed separately from compiling, as BullseyeCoverage does.

Resolution

There are two alternative resolutions.

Update to Visual Studio 2010 or later
After modifying a header, rebuild your whole project.

More Information

The Microsoft C++ compiler generates dependency information into a file named project.pdb during preprocessing. BullseyeCoverage feeds the compiler preprocessed source files. Microsoft C++ records only dependency information for the main source file but not the header files named by #line directives.

Updated: 5 Jan 2021