So I was debugging a function this week that is called whenever my program is focused, which leads to a huge frustration when setting a breakpoint in it. (You know the moment you F5 your debugger, then ALT+Tab back, the focus logic strikes again and you’re back where you were a millisecond ago in the debugger.)
Typically to work around these situations, I’ve slapped in a few Debug.WriteLines, and started all over from scratch. But this is annoying and time consuming, and I’m not always debugging code I can change. Some folks solve this problem by using remote debugging, but if I’m too lazy to put in a Debug.WriteLine, I’m CERTAINLY too lazy to remote debug.
So I stumbled across a new feature (which folks have mentioned to me several times before but I had not yet seen the light).
When you set a breakpoint in VS 2005, right click on it the next time, and select the “When hit…” option. This will change your breakpoint into a tracepoint! A tracepoint does not stop the debugger, it simply spews output into the output window when it is hit.
So, the next time you’re debugging something in VS, take a minute, right click and enjoy the wonder that is “when hit”.
Instructions for creating a tracepoint.
— Microsoft Products Developed in .NET A brief summary of the approximate number of lines of .net code in various MS products, which is a question I’ve seen asked by a lot of people in a lot of places. Not…
What about multiple monitors?
Very useful when debugging GUI-code.
Oh man – thanks for the tip – this is going to minimize my insanity!
I too saw the light.
http://josheinstein.com/journal/archive/2006/01/05/1257.aspx
Roger,
Multi-mon helps with some UI code, but there’s still a big class of issues where having the focus move to the debugger mucks things up.
I disagree with Chris about remote debugging. I’m pretty lazy as well, but I do remote debugging all the time. All you need is a way to interrupt your program when it starts – a parameter that calls MessageBox works well – and then you can easily attach and debug.
I do spend a lot of time switching on my switchbox.
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