msbuild - Visual Studio 2010, how to build projects in parallel on multicore

Question

I have a big solution with more than 40 projects. Almost half of them are test projects. In my project we use both Code Contracts, Code Analysis, Style Analysis. I want to be able to build the projects that are not dependent in parallel on my quad core CPU.

How can I setup msbuild to build the projects in parallel?

Answer 1

In Visual Studio: Tools | Options | Projects and Solutions | Build and Run. This should default to your CPU count.

From the command line: msbuild /maxcpucount[:n] (is n is not specified, then it will use the CPU count).