How can I get Visual Studio to beep at me if a bui

Question

Often, I need to recompile and it takes a minute or two, so I tend to switch to a web browser to kill that time. Sometimes I forget to look back and the build succeeded a few minutes before I noticed.

Is it possible to somehow get Visual Studio (just UI version, not command line) to beep at me if the build (for the project or solution) completes successfully without warning?

Also helpful would be a beep when the first breakpoint is hit while debugging, since sometimes I have to wait a minute or two for this to happen as well.

Do I need to write a macro for it, perhaps? Are there hidden settings somewhere?

Answer 1

I'm seeing in my System Sounds a category called "Microsoft Visual Studio Macros" that contains three sounds: Build Canceled, Build Failed, and Build Succeeded. I'm guessing they got there from the sample macros that get installed by default. Might try hitting Alt-F8 in VS and poking around in the macros.

My favorite solution is this one though: VSBuildStatus. If you've got Windows 7, it will show the build progress in the taskbar (like Explorer does with file copying). Turns red on a build failure. Must-have.

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/2A2293B4-1808-44AA-B030-661F6803D8A1