How to view build log in VS2010?

Sometimes you search for Visual Studio functionality that you use every couple of years to pin down something nasty: The HTML build log output.

And after searching for a long time, then nasty surprise is: the feature got removed.

Q: (by Andrew MacDonald)

With earlier versions of Visual C++, you could view the build log by ctrl+clicking the link in the output window or opening it directly from the intermediate folder. With VS2010 Beta 1 this doesn’t seem to exist. Have I missed it? There is a .log file written to the solution folder, but it just contains the same things as the output window, and doesn’t show the command lines used. I need this to debug why something isn’t building correctly.

A: (by Brian Tyler)

The old HTML log output option is no longer available – we use the command MSBuild logging instead. What you need to do is go to Tools->Options->Projects and Solutions->Build and Run. At the bottom, change the logging level from Normal to Detailed for either the output window or log file.

This will generate a considerable amount of information about the overall build process – so what I do is then just click in the output window and search for cl.exe, or whatever the name of the tool is you are looking for.

–jeroen

via: How to view build log in VS2010?.