VS 2010 IDE 2GB limit

Question

I am using VS 2010 on a win 7 64 bit system with 8 GB of memory. My application is 32 bit. While in the VS 2010 .Net IDE, the app shows up in the Windows task manager as \"M

Answer 1

the IDE fails with an Out of memory exception

No, your program fails with that exception, not the IDE. You'd have to run editbin.exe in a post build event to set the flag:

set path=%path%;$(devenvdir);$(devenvdir)\..\..\vc\bin
editbin /largeaddressaware $(targetpath)

That will not work on the vshost.exe version, you'll have to turn off the hosting process. Project + Properties, Debug tab.

Answer 2

Some options I can think of:

1. Disable the VSHost process - Do you actually require the extra debugging features from the VS hosting process? If not just to untick the "Enable Visual Studio Hosting Process" option.

2. Externalise the problematic DLL - Wrap the COM DLL in a simple 32-bit process and compile the rest as 64-bit using an appropriate variety of IPC to connect the two.

3. Force the flag in the VSHost process - Use a post-build command to forcibly set the flag in the .vshost.exe (no idea if that would work though!)