Intermittent 'build busy' errors

Question

I have a Win32 C++ solution with several dependent projects.  Often when I build or rebuild, I get some sort of 'busy error.  For instance:

error MSB6003: The specified task executable "link.exe" could not be run. The process cannot access the file 'E:\dev\cs\mscs\Debug\link.4172-cvtres.read.1.tlog' because it is being used by another process.    C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\Platforms\Win32\Microsoft.Cpp.Win32.Targets

If I am persistent and retry (sometimes it takes 3 or 4 retries), the problem resolves itself and everything works.  A long time ago, someone in a forum pointed out that this was a problem with VS2005 on multi-cpu processors.

I had this problem on previous versions of VS, but now I've upgraded to 2010 and still having the issue.

Is this a Visual Studio problem or perhaps some sort of setting that I have wrong?

In terms of computer details, I'm now running Windows 7 Ultimate on an i7-930, but I've also seen the exact problem on a quad core running XP.

Answer 1

I have seen similar issues due to anti-virus software.  A file gets created or modified in the build process, the anti-virus gets curious and gives it a scan, then the build process tries to access the file again while the anti-virus is still holding it.  One possibility might to configure the anti-virus software to exclude .tlog files, or perhaps exclude monitoring E:\dev\cs\mscs\

Answer 2

Hello,

When the issue happens, you could use Process Explorer to find which process is handling the file.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Regards,
Rong-Chun Zhang
MSDN Subscriber Supportin Forum
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Answer 3

Are any two of your projects outputting objs to the same folder? If so, we are aware of this issue and that error is occurring due to a conflict in the tlog file name. As of now, you may work around it by turning off incremental build for those projects.

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Renin John Visual C++ Project & Build Team

Answer 4

John,

Yes, projects are sharing build directories. This must be the problem.  I'll rework the projects to change the directories and see what happens.

Thanks.

Answer 5

Good thought, but stopping anti-virus didn't change the problem.  See my reply below to the issue of having projects sharing a directory.  I believe that's the real problem.

 

Answer 6

Changing the intermediate directories solved the problems.  That's where the .tlog files are located.