I’ve been working on a BizTalk Server 2004 project that had (not any more) between 6 or 8 visual studio solutions each one with a BizTalk Project inside. After a few minutes swapping from a solution to another I decided to add all the project in a single solution.
I notice that all the solution are configure to build the assemblies to a common reference folder shared by all projects:
And the other project are referring the assemblies from that folder.
However when trying to compile the project I was getting the following error:
The file ‘MyDLLProject.dll’ cannot be copied to the run directory. The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
But when I open that project isolated from the others projects I could successfully compile.
CAUSE
The cause is easy… the Visual Studio has a lock on the file.
Note: That this lock could be from the Visual Studio instance that you are working on or another Visual Studio instance in another session.
SOLUTION 1
The easy solution to avoid further problems is to change the “Output path” to another location for example the default “bin\Development\”
And then instead of referring the assembly from a folder, chose Add reference from Projects
Work like a charm!
SOLUTION 2
Close all the Visual Studio solution that reference this assembly or assemblies and build the project.
