Why does Visual Studio 2008 always create an installation project, even when up to date?

Question

For regular projects with source code, when you ask Visual Studio to create a project, it will build it only if it is considered obsolete. (The documentation for the / build command line confirms this.)

However, for installation projects, it seems that Visual Studio always creates them, regardless of whether the dependencies are updated. This happens even for a simple scenario, when the installation project contains only the main output of another project.

Why do installation projects behave like this? Is there any way to change this behavior?

Answer 1

The installation project is actually a utility for packaging, it checks all projects and creates them if necessary, but each time it starts, it will create a new package. It is not possible to change this behavior that I see.

I usually install my collector - Configuration Manager, so as not to build installation projects. Then I start the assembly when I want to create / update the settings.