Visual Studio installer projects - which project did I forget to include?

I made an interesting discovery while working on a project the other day. As I watched the compiler output from a particularly large solution I noticed several of the required assemblies were being built after the installer project. The reason was that someone forgot to add these assemblies to the installer. Normally this isn't hard to find and fix, but this particular solution has 150 projects, 149 of which need to be included in the installer. Manually comparing the list of installer dependencies to the list of projects takes quite a bit of time and is error-prone. Fortunately we can use the Project Dependencies screen to quickly find the missing items.

To illustrate, I've create a simple solution with five assembly projects and an installer project.


As I add each project to the installer, we see the primary output added within the installer


It looks simple enough when you only have a few projects. Add a couple dozen more and you can see that things are going to become more difficult.

To get a better view of the installer's dependencies, right-click on the solution in the Solution Explorer and choose "Properties." On the Property Pages dialog, choose Common Properties > Project Dependencies from the tree on the left. Under the Project dropdown on the right, select the installer project.

Here is my installer before adding any projects


After I add AssemblyA to the installer, the Project Dependencies looks like this


Notice the box beside AssemblyA now contains a checkbox. As I continue adding projects, each of these will be similarly checked. Below is an example after all but one assembly has been added. Even with 149 projects to include, it takes very little time to scan through the list and see which items remain unchecked.