Almost unconsciously I hit the keyboard build macro that builds my entire solution. This can happen just as I notice a code change. The build dominates my computer, and I basically have to wait till it finishes. 10 seconds!

How can I cancel a build?

0

14 Answers

You can hit Ctrl+Break on the keyboard to cancel/stop a build that is currently in progress.

4

Go to Visual Studio Build Menu -> cancel build , easy :)

5

This is crude, but it works well. The Visual Studio on one of my projects (I turn MVC view building on to catch markup errors), well, the project becomes unresponsive while building. I can't cancel the build using the keyboard shortcuts.

So I made this batch file that sits on my quick launch task bar.

@echo off
echo KILL BILLd
for /L %%i in (1,1,10) do ( Taskkill /IM aspnet_compiler.exe /F timeout 1
)

I also made the batch file launch minimized. The build stops and Visual Studio just throws in the error window that there was a problem building.

1

Ctrl + Break works, but only if the Build window is active. Also, interrupting the build will sometimes leave a corrupted .obj file that will have to be manually deleted in order for the build to proceed.

1

If all else fails go to task manager and kill the msbuild task under Visual Studio 2017

Ctrl + End works for me on Visual C++ 2010 Express.

Visual Studio 2015 Professional Update 3

If you are using Mac you can do following

Click Build --> Cancel from the Visual Studio Menu

or

Select Azure App Service Activity window --> Cancel it will cancel the publish activity.

I'm using Visual Studio 2015. To stop build you can follow:

1. Ctrl + Pause
2. Ctrl + Break

1

The "pause" command was a function button underneath my right shift key, so the below combination of keys did the trick for me.

Ctrl + Fn + Shift

I was hit by an unresponsive build and absolutely nothing would allow me to either kill or cancel the build. Even trying to end the task would trigger a user input window, saying that it could not be ended while the build is still going on (quite ironic because that was precisely the intention, to leave that broken state).

The build was taken care of by MSBuild, so the one way I found is to end its task. When forcing MSBuild.exe to end, VS will wake up and finally see the build as cancelled, allowing you to work again.

Hope this helps someone in the same situation.

2

The build context menu has a Cancel build in Visual Studio 2013.

Go to the Window menu and choose "Web Publish Activity" There will be a cancel button.Cancel button on "Web Publish Activity" tab

For users of Lenovo Thinkpad T470s like me, you can simulate the break key by hitting Ctrl+Fn+P, which cancels the build.

If you do not have a break key on your keyboard, you can change the keyboard shortcut to cancel the build.

Just search hotkeys in the search menu. This should take you to Environment > Keyboard. From there, search for Build.Cancel and you can change it to whatever keyboard shortcut ( eg. Ctrl+Alt+End ). This is a good keyboard shortcut because it won't conflict with other uses of Ctrl+End or Ctrl+Shift+End .

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