Note: The External Integration mode was the standard IncrediBuild Integration mode with Visual Studio until IncrediBuild v. 9.5.0. Starting from v. 9.5.0, you can select whether you want to work with the External or Internal Integration mode. Â
The External Integration mode is the default integration mode of IncrediBuild with Visual Studio. In this mode, IncrediBuild fully controls the build process and executes it from start to finish, bypassing Visual Studio settings and procedures. From this perspective, IncrediBuild is activated from Visual Studio IDE, but its operation is external to Visual Studio native processes.
By using the External Integration mode, all IncrediBuild features are available to you. Most importantly in this context, you can use the Predictive Execution feature, which is not natively supported by Visual Studio. The Predictive Execution feature can further optimize your build acceleration, by increasing the execution parallelization of compilation tasks when no dependencies exist.
You can also use the Batch Build feature, and all other IncrediBuild optimization capabilities. The progress and output of your builds will be displayed in IncrediBuild Build Monitor inside Visual Studio IDE.
In addition, when using the External Integration mode, the output of your builds when running them from Visual Studio, will be identical to the output of these builds when running them from the CLI using IncrediBuild BuildConsole. This occurs because special settings that are configured in Visual Studio IDE, will be bypassed by IncrediBuild when the builds are executed.
However, if you are interested in applying your special Visual Studio settings to your builds, or you want to use all Visual Studio post-build windows, procedures, extensions and messages, you should consider selecting the Internal Integration mode. You should also take into consideration that the initiation of builds will consume additional memory, and the initialization time will be a bit slower in the External Integration mode, since IncrediBuild needs to initialize a new Visual Studio-IncrediBuild instance in order to gain control over the execution of the build.
Note: CMake builds can only run from Visual Studio IDE with IncrediBuild in the Internal Integration mode. If you selected the External Integration mode, and you start a CMake build, IncrediBuild will automatically switch to the Internal Integration mode in order to execute this build.
External Integration Mode – Benefits and Limitations
In sum, these are some of the benefits and limitations of the External Integration mode:
External Integration benefits:
Full availability of IncrediBuild features and optimization capabilities, including the Predictive Execution and Batch Build features.
Identical output of builds running with IncrediBuild from Visual Studio and from IncrediBuild BuildConsole CLI.
External Integration limitations:
Special Visual Studio settings are not applied to the builds.
Visual Studio post-build windows, procedures, and extensions are not available.
Slower build initiation and a bit higher memory consumption.