How to: Create and remove project dependencies

Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

When building a solution that contains multiple projects, it can be necessary to build certain projects first, to generate code used by other projects. When a project consumes executable code generated by another project, the project that generates the code is referred to as a project dependency of the project that consumes the code. Such dependency relationships can be defined in the Project Dependencies dialog box.

To assign dependencies to projects

  1. In Solution Explorer, select a project.

  2. On the Project menu, choose Project Dependencies.

    The Project Dependencies dialog box opens.

    Note

    The Project Dependencies option is only available in a solution with more than one project.

  3. On the Dependencies tab, select a project from the Project drop-down menu.

  4. In the Depends on field, select the check box of any other project that must build before this project does.

    Your solution must consist of more than one project before you can create project dependencies.

To remove dependencies from projects

  1. In Solution Explorer, select a project.

  2. On the Project menu, choose Project Dependencies.

    The Project Dependencies dialog box opens.

    Note

    The Project Dependencies option is only available in a solution with more than one project.

  3. On the Dependencies tab, select a project from the Project drop-down menu.

  4. In the Depends on field, clear the check boxes beside any other projects that are no longer dependencies of this project.

See also