Our VS2012 .vcxproj projects are generated from .pro files using qmake. The /Fd settings for Release targets contain a .pdb file path "$(IntDir)vc$(PlatformToolsetVersion).pdb" - which is useless for Release targets.

Unfortunately that path also has a nasty side effect in VS2012 that disables correct dependency handling and partial rebuilds. This means currently for Release targets always a complete rebuilt is performed!

Manually clearing the .pdb path for the Release target resolves the issue temporarily but this is only a nasty workaround. qmake must generate the right (empty) setting to prevent this.