[RESOLVED] Visual Studios .NET 2003 Strange Build Dependencies

[CrazedKeebler]

Hello all, it's my first post here, so we'll see how it goes.

As an upfront disclaimer, I'm trying to bandaid a rediculously complicated inherited build process that I would like nothing less than to destroy and use some modern aids, but alas I'm stuck with what I've got and will try to make due

I've got a solution with 107 projects in Visual Studios .NET 2003, but we will say I've got 26 projects that build in order A->Z. I do a clean, ensure that no files are lurking about to mess with me, then I build.

The build breaks on projects P and Q with errors of "identifier not found, even with arguement dependent lookup", with the dependency being project H which built a ways before. I do a project-only rebuild on H, then a project-only rebuild on P, and no problems. If I do a project-only rebuild on Q at this point, no problem. If I do a solution build (not clean) right after rebuilding P, it will break on Q, again with the same error which is satisfied by H.

None of the other projects build H's code.

Any ideas on:
1) What does the error "identifier not found, even with arguement dependent lookup" actually mean? Google wasn't able to assist.
2) What is causing this strange build dependency?

Much thanks...

[Igor Vartanov]

C3861 (identifier not found) is related to incomplete header files.

What I can imagine as a reason to have this issue in multi-project solution is dynamic header generation, like importing COM classes or something similar.

[CrazedKeebler]

Thanks Igor, that's something I wasn't looking for. I'll see what I find with that trail.

Would you happen to know what the "argument dependent lookup" actually does? From what I can tell it's looking through different namespaces, but in the source code I can navigate to the definition/declaration (goto definition/declaration), so the IDE at least is able to resolve the identifier. The compiler can't?

[Igor Vartanov]

Exactly, the compiler can not.


Argument-dependent lookup

[CrazedKeebler]

Thanks Igor.

One of the middle projects was indeed generating a header, overwriting the header that satisfies the identifier. So building the correct one again restored the needed header. Solved! Good first run here.