Faster C++ compilation on VS2005

So after a couple years of putting up with very slow build times, i couldn't take it anymore. We're preparing to migrate to VS2005 for primary C++ development, and a 20x increase in the time needed for a full build just isn't gonna cut it. So i started going through the options, hoping there was an option or something, hoping that they hadn't made the compiler itself that much slower in the process of adding new features and increasing standards compliance.

Sure enough, there was a simple solution. Seems the "automatic" option for using pre-compiled headers isn't available anymore, and so during the conversion PCH was just turned off for all projects.

At this point, i'm going to admit that i've never given too much thought to PCH support in VC++. The only other time i've used PCH at all was with Borland's C++ compiler, where manually specifying what you wanted pre-compiled was the only option (at the time anyway). That It Just Worked on VC++ was enough for me - why mess with what works? But the downside was, i didn't have a very clear idea of what was actually going on. Put the system headers in STDAFX.H, rebuild all, check in and forget it. Upon realizing that this was no longer an option, i didn't really know what to do...

Then i found Bruce Dawson's excellent article on the subject. Going well beyond MSDN's dry descriptions of how, Bruce details the various methods for configuring, optimizing, and using PCH in VC++.

With this, i enabled PCH manually on our various projects, and brought build times back down to something acceptable (roughly 1.5x what it takes in VS6). VS2K5 is usable at last!

Now, if i could just do something about that annoying "Updating Intellisense..."