Some notes on using the Live Service Trace Viewer

  • Article
  1. For the LiveTrace.zip, as well as any code archive you download from a trusted source on the 'net, right-click on the zip and choose "Unblock" before extracting. That will allow you to avoid the "this project does not come from a trusted source" crap in Visual Studio. (And I say, "crap" not because the warning isn't a good thing, but because the feature isn't properly documented, so you have to find out tips like the one above on people's blogs). 
  2. If you are having trouble with building the solution (and I will update the zip to repair these issues),
    1. Remove the test applications from the solution
    2. Remove the icon copy post-build event from the LiveServiceTraceViewer project. 
  3. For self-hosted services, you need to follow the preferred practice of explicitly identifying your Base Addresses. The Live Trace Listener keys off the event of the service host binding to a base address to recognize that a service is coming online. Should have mentioned that in the documentation. Evidently I also emit crap. 
  4. Yes, it relies on MSMQ (which is why I don't call it the "Real-Time Trace Viewer"). Neglected to mention that in this version of the documentation=more crap from me -- no wait! a queue is right there in the diagram. But I believe that the Viewer detects whether MSMQ is avaiable and tells one to install it if it is not.