Is it possible to edit files in one project when starting another project in the same solution in VS2010?

Question

Almost all of our Windows projects consist of a WCF service hosted on Windows, and then a WPF client application. All of them are usually divided into two different solutions: one for the service, one for the client. This was done for various reasons, but we recently looked, perhaps, to bring them together into a new project, which we did. This means that you do not need to run two copies of Visual Studio and simplify them for other things.

Now our task is to edit the WPF client when debugging the service. Many developers will keep the service for most of the day when making changes to the client. But it seems that with this setup, when you start debugging the service, Visual Studio will not let you edit any other code in the solution.

Is there a way around this so you can start the service whenever you want, and still be able to edit the WPF and CS files in another project? Or do these two parts remain in two separate decisions?

Answer 1

You will need two instances of Visual Studio: one for debugging the service, and the other for coding.

You can also imagine that the service works without a debugger, and just attach it manually when you are ready to start / debug the client you were working on.