How to work around IDE freezes in Visual Studio 2019 when switching between Build configurations

After a lot of project unloading, deleting our custom configurations back and forth and project file modifications, we finally found a workaround to continue our work by browsing other/similar issues to ours in the VS feedback forums. The freeze of the solution is caused by a feature that is meant to fasten up solution loading: parallel project initialization.

It seems to be an issue that some others already had with 16.2.x versions, so it may be a regression (as it is flagged as fixed).

The workaround

The workaround is pretty easy, just follow these simple steps:

• Open Tools / Options in Visual Studio 2019 and find the Projects and Solutions node
• Unselect ‘Allow parallel project initialization’
• Click ‘OK’ and close the solution

After that, we need to delete the .vs folder of Visual Studio 2019 within the local solution folder. This folder contains a SQLite DB that corresponds with some behind the scenes stuff for the parallel project initialization (and more).

Now open the solution – switching between Build configurations should now work again.

As always, I hope this post is helpful for some of you.

Until the next, happy coding!