I have VS2010 professional and Im working with a large code base that Im unfamiliar with. I want to know what code gets executed when a certain event occurs (namely, when I click a specific button). I know this could easily be done with Intellitrace, but that requires an Ultimate subscription (which is outrageously expensive). Is there any other way I can do this? Ideally without installing anything new (even if its free), but thats not a deal breaker.
You can see what .NET code is executed with Runtime Flow (developed by me, 30-day trial).
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When placing the curser on a closing bracket in c# for instance, there is a small annoying delay before the opening bracket gets highlighted, and you have to sit and wait before you can use shortcuts such as (ctrl + shift + up/down). It feels like it is intended behaviour for reasons beyond me, so i don't think it is a bug or because my computer is slow (it's not), but it's driving me crazy.
I'm on a freshly installed PC, so i have only testet it in a few programming languages / file formats, and the behaviour only occours in some of them.
The delayed highligh behaviour occurs in .cs (c#), and .css files, but not in .js and .html files, here the code gets highlighed instantaneously exactly like i want it to in .cs files aswell.
I'm using Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition.
I have had this problem as well, since first installing. I can confirm that Update 1 CTP addresses this issue, and the delay is almost gone (maybe 1/8 second now.)
This UI delay was actually called out as a bugfix that was included with the update:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3025135
To the problem that there is a delay highlighting the brackets: In my opinion that has nothing to do with a bug. I think it takes a little while because your code needs to be parsed every time you change something in order to highlight the brackets. When you have many lines of code in one file it is obvious that it takes a little more time than normal.
Here are some tips that may help you:
Click the bracket and press STRG + ´ this will bring you directly to the other bracket. Or you press ALT + ´ and it will mark all your code in between your current brackets. You can look up the shortcuts of Visual Studio in Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Keyboard:
I'd recommend everybody programming in Visual Studio is to change the highlight color of the matching bracket. Have a look at this:
Here you can change all the colors and forms used for specific searchterms. I personally use Visual Assist 2015 to highlight my code (that's why I didn't change anything here). It is way more faster than VS itself and comes with a lot more functions like bracket guidelines who will show you the indent level of your brackets. Have a look, maybe you like it:
Its about 500ms in a newly created console project
500 msec is a magic number in .NET. You can get some insight from the source code for the C# Language Service, accidentally (?) exposed by a Microsoft programmer on github. Most relevant file is probably this one:
internal interface IBraceMatchingService
{
Task<BraceMatchingResult?> GetMatchingBracesAsync(Document document,
int position, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default(CancellationToken));
}
Or in other words, the brace matching service runs as a background task. Such tasks normally run on a thread-pool thread and are subject to scheduling by the threadpool manager. That's where the magic 500 ms number comes into play. The manager attempts to keep the number of executing tp threads down to the number of processor cores available on the machine, the most efficient way to run threads. However, if the existing tp threads take too long to finish their job then the manager assumes that they are bogged down by I/O and allows an extra one to run. It does this once every 500 msec.
So first-order estimate of your problem is that VS has too many active thread-pool threads and they don't complete in a timely manner. Causing the brace matching task to run too late.
Finding out exactly what specific tasks bog it down is technically possible. I can't guarantee success with the Community edition and you'd need a fair amount of insight in how to read thread call stacks to get ahead. Startup another instance of Visual Studio and use Debug > Attach to Process. Pick "devenv.exe" from the list. Let it trundle while it is attempting to find PDB files, then use Debug > Break All.
First place to look is Debug > Windows > Tasks. Pretty unlikely you'll see anything there however, normal is to see none. Next one is Debug > Windows > Threads. You ought to see about 15 active threads back in that window. Hover over their Location column to take a peek at their callstack. Making sense of what you see isn't that simple unfortunately, it will help a lot if you can compare what you see with another machine that does not have this problem.
Since you have this problem on more than one machine, another approach is to look for an environmental factor that they have in common. Things to look for are aggressive anti-malware, a network connection that is too slow or too unreliable, a poorly performing add-in that you like but runs poorly on a VS version it wasn't tested on.
And consider that VS2015 isn't exactly ready for prime-time. Of all the recent VS versions released in the past 18 years, it is probably the least stable. It has a lot of heavy internal changes and there were an unprecedented number of alpha and beta versions with critical bug fixes implemented just a few months ago. Try it again after Update 1 is released.
Seems like this will be fixed in a future Visual Studio update: https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/issues/1906#issuecomment-145874647
I have not found a definitive solution for your problem.
This was a known bug in the VS2015 review edition.
This links discusses the delay (this link refers to c# btw, not c):
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/1033540/braces-are-not-highlighted-correctly-in-c
And there are still similar problems for some VS2015 Community Edition users.
http://www.developerteacher.com/msdn/bracket-matching-highlights-not-working-like-i-had-in-2013-express-4227
Personally, I think you are stuck with a bug and if I were you I'd try the following:
Make sure I had unistalled all previous editions of VS.
Try a repair.
Completely uninstall and reinstall VS2015 if running repair doesn't work
Go back to VS2013 if it drives you cannot stand it, and wait until VS2015 is a bit more ripe on the vine.
One thing I have found with VS, is when it plays up it's painful, it takes so long to install and the worst case was when I ended up uninstalling and downloading everything that was associated with the install. It now works fine. (this was after previewing 2015 and then going back to 2013). You can also try this for VS2015 and also try a new download.
I sometimes will have a look at some previews, but after jumping in with haste too many times with the latest software releases and then repenting with leisure. I am now happy to wait for new releases to be out for a while before upgrading.
Another FYI for you to browse.
This is a link to Visual Studio 2015 RC fixed bugs and known issues. There are quite a few issues and hacks suggested. (not specific to your problem, but still there a few months ago.).
I am assuming you know how to play around with the settings. I've added the obvious, in case it's been overlooked.
I have added this screen shot from VS2013 settings.
Make sure you have automatic delimeter highlighting checked.
Sorry I could not be of more help.
I cant get the Graphical Debugger in VS 2012 Ultimate to work, & I have no idea why.
The debugger starts ok, but when I hit the print screen button, the debugger just says its waiting for DX to draw frames. [even after I exit]
I am sure the draw refers to the Present() in the swap chain. I am calling it [thats why you see the box down there]
Is there some bug I need to be aware of?
Edit:
I think the render target might be related to OMSetRenderTargets().
I called it exactly as the SDK sample did, so I don't know what else to think.
I'm a developer on the Visual Studio graphics diagnostic tools at Microsoft. I'm fairly new on the team, and I don't believe that any previous team members were actively watching Stack Overflow, so sorry about the wait on this question.
As it's been a few months I'm guessing that you might not have the repro around anymore. So such this might be a bit hard to diagnose here and now. From what you shared it looks like the playback engine (which we use to capture and replay DirectX data while the application is running) crash while trying to collect data on your application. Sadly with the first release of our tool (In VS 2012) stability issues of this type are more common then we would like. Simply a function of how we did collection on something as complex as DirectX. However since then, particularly with Update 2, we've made some very big strides with compatibility and stability. As a first step I'd make sure that you have all the VS updates installed as Update 2 was a big upgrade for the graphics diagnostic tools in particular (Preview of 2013 as well if you have access to that).
Why don't you use PIX instead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3PISvNTeB0
PIX Tutorial
I'm trying to trace some legacy code at work, Visual Studio 2003 and .Net 1.1. There are actions done on Keypress and Text change that I know happen but, the Text fields themselves are made dynamically or are a control. I need to find the code that is executed when these things happen. Because of some poor architecture decisions on this piece of software the code is very spaghetti and hard to manually figure out.
What I would like to do is set Visual Studio into a mode where it would break when a specific event is handled regardless of the handler. This way I can get into the code and see through what is being done to make the translations and set variables.
Ultimately I'm trying to trace down when this code accesses the database to do lookups and updates so, allowing to watch for when a database connection happens would also be helpful and achieve much the same thing.
A small ma and pa shop came to me recently with a request to update a vb6 program one of their former part time employees made for them while home from college. On the cd the student provided is both the source code and a installer for the program, which extremely helps. I would like to just give them a new cd with a new installer and the updated source code. My question is, how do I go about creating or if easier updating a installer for a language that entered "Non Supported Stage" back in 2008?
Update:
Just to answer some of the questions, the updates they are asking for are just changing the wording of some labels and changing one control from a textbox to a combobox. They are a ma and pa shop and don't want to pay the cost to have the app re-written to a newer language, even though it has been recommended.
You're going to need a copy of Visual Basic 6 (or Visual Studio 6) which is difficult. If you have an MSDN subscription, I'm quite sure you can download it from their archive, but if not, you might need to buy a copy. Check EBay. Have the ma and pa shop purchase it at their own expense, and they should own it in case they want to make future changes. You can use it on their behalf to do work for them, if you're the only one using it, and just uninstall it when you're done.
Also, if you have a copy of Visual Studio 2005, technically you can "downgrade" to VS6 but you have to call Microsoft and have them send you the install program, and you're not allowed to use VS2005 concurrently with VS6. Yeah, I know...
Ok, so if you've got that far, get the source on your computer and get it under source control. I suggest Mercurial (specifically the TortoiseHg client). I've had lots of luck with it on a VB6 project, and it's free. (Don't use SourceSafe, even if it comes free with VS6!) The distributed nature of the Mercurial repository means you can hand them back a CD with the entire repository on it, and the next poor sap who has to make changes will at least be able to do a diff and know what you did.
As someone else here said, VB6 has a built-in utility for making install programs, but I think you had to have the Enterprise version for that. It's worth finding that out before you get a copy.
Now go ahead and make changes, but be very careful. Remember that you probably don't have any unit tests, so you're likely to break stuff. If you want to be professional about it, there are unit testing frameworks out there for VB6. For instance, vbUnit. Again, I suggest having the customer buy a copy (about $99 for a single developer seat, I think). If the change was anything more than changing the company logo on the splash screen, then this is something I'd invest in. Write tests that cover every module or feature you're going to change. If all the logic is in event handlers in the form itself, carefully remove the code you need to change out into modules that you can write unit tests for. Write the tests to verify the current functionality first.
Then go ahead and make your changes. If you've gone to the trouble of setting up a testing framework, then you might as well use some TDD and write your tests first. Write a test, make sure it fails, write enough code to make it pass, and repeat.
All of this still requires you to have a solid manual test plan to check the functionality at the end. That means you need a solid grasp of what it does. You can pretty much assume that no matter how careful you are, you'll break something you didn't understand. Make sure to give yourself enough time to fix other problems that pop up after you deliver it.
I recommend against re-writing it in .NET unless it's a really simple program with only one form. The effort likely isn't worth it.
Caveat: beware of 3rd party components the original programmer might have used, but not included on the CD. If they used some ActiveX or COM stuff that they purchased from a 3rd party, but they didn't license it to your customer, you might have to end up purchasing it again just to get it to compile.
EDIT:
Based on your extra information, if you're really just changing a couple of controls and wording, then I think you can get away without a unit testing framework. I would definitely use some source control though.
I do remember using the Package and Deployment Wizard, and I agree it sucked. I actually used a 3rd party installer, now that I think about it. However, if the changes are small and the original application used the PDW, I'd probably stick with that.
You Can Convert VB6 projects to .NET.
If you have Visual Studio 2005 or higher...
Or the worse case is re write the code using VB.NET.
Go to this Link.
Convert VB6 - .NET
If I recall correctly, Visual Studio 6 came with a rudimentary wizard for creating an installation program for a VB6 application. So, assuming that you have Visual Studio 6 installed for VB6, there should be an installer wizard that you can use. However, it may have problems deploying the VB6 runtimes on Vista or Win 7 machines. Perhaps another SO guru will have the answer to that one.
You can also use the freeware Inno Setup to create an installer for a VB6 application. More information can be found here. However, it requires more manual effort than what came with Visual Studio.
I saw that Beta 1 of VS2010 was publicly availible.
My question to those of you who has tried it is: does it work good?
Will it cause my computer to blow up in tiny pieces? Will it crash randomly? Will it work with some minor glitches? Or is it just perfect from bottom up?
I'm only coding school- and hobby-stuff, so nothing that someones life depend upon, but i still want software that works. How close to a final product is it? Is it worth trying?
It's a bit slow, and there's no offline MSDN, but it's worth trying IMO. Having said that it's slow, I still use it on my NC10 netbook, so it's clearly not that bad :)
I've got it side-by-side VS2008, and that hasn't caused any problems.
I've seen a couple of glitches (once the keyboard handling went completely wonky) but it's certainly usable. The main question is what you want to get out of trying it - in my case I absolutely need to code against C# 4 to explore the new features. I do most of that from the command line in fact, where the speed of VS obviously isn't an issue, but it's nice to see the VS-specific features as well (like the debug threading views for Parallel Extensions).
It seems more or less usable on the .NET side. The C++ side is a bit more sketchy. On one hand, they've added support for some very nice new C++0x features, on the other, they've broken some absolute fundamentals.
Your plain old main function won't compile in 32-bit with unicode enabled. (Workarounds: Either compile as 64-bit, disable unicode, or rename the function to wmain).
This seems to me to be a strong hint that the C++ side of things is nowhere near release-worthy. I'd probably wait for beta2 before doing any serious work with that.
I would say it is great, but the performance hurts a bit.
Here is an idea for you: Install it into a VirtualPC. Then you can play and not care what it does. You don't like it, delete the VPC image and keep on trucking. That is how I play with Microsoft betas now. I never install them on any real machine - too risky.
Usable: Yes.
Recommended: Not if you'r a touchpad-addict or dislike crashing apps.
I've been trying it for 2 weeks now coding small C#-projects and these are my impressions
Reasons to use 2010:
Looks good
Multi monitor support
I can see myself using the code templating but right now i couldnt find any really useful stuff except for reducing the fontsize of comments.
Zoom in the editor
Select a variable and then press shift+up/down to go to next usage of this variable
Ctrl+, brings up instant search of classes and functions in the entire project. (i've become really addicted to this)
Floating watches for single objects
Reasons to not use 2010:
TOUCHPAD SCROLL DOESN'T WORK IN THE EDITOR!!! (this is reason enough to not upgrade if you are using it on a laptop)
I've had some random app-crashes in the middle of just writing code, once or twice per day maybe.
UI sometimes freezes randomly for about 30seconds and then returns to normal.
It started to use 100% CPU power from one of my cores once when it was minimized in basic editing-mode and i was doing other stuff in other programs, i only noticed it because the fan started to go wild.
Otherwhise it's pretty similar to 2008. I haven't noticed any difference in speed like other people say.
You need to ask yourself: what is the advantage for you in using VS2010 over VS2008? I would suggest that there is no advantage if all you are doing is "school- and hobby-stuff".
I'm still using VS2008 for business related stuff (and, indeed, VC6 for some stuff). I prefer to wait until all the early adopters have tested it (and Microsoft has released at least one service pack after the real product release) before I do their testing for them.
It seems to co-exist with other versions of VS without causing any problems.
Regarding the slowness - it seems to be the UI that is slow, rather than building. Once it's going it doesn't seem much slower on my fast quadcore. I've yet to try it on my laptop.
It's usable enough, the small glitches that I've encounter weren't that bad. However, certain VS extensions(like XNA) don't work in VS2010 at the moment.
It's fun to toy with. Not usable for me, cause re#er does not support it yet (had to install TestDriven .NET which works through keyboard shortcuts only to run my tests).
Gave me an insight how addicted I am. :/
Btw, on Win7, without virtual pc it seemed even faster than vs2008 for me.
VS2010 doesn't yet support mobile device projects, which might or might not matter to you.
VC++ wise - VS2010 has a built-in 64-bit compiler, VS2008 does not.
You can supposedly add 64-bit support to VS2008, but it takes some effort.
I've been using VS 2010 beta (with .NET 4.0 beta) on Windows 7 RC. I've been trying to rewrite parts of a large-scale business application in it to see what can be done with it.
The UI freezes frequently. I'm talking 1-10 minutes between freezes. The UI does not come back, so I'm forced to kill devenv.exe every time it happens. Microsoft probably puts my error reports in their spam folder by now.
For me, VS 2010 beta 1 classifies as unusable. However, it's fast, the new IDE functions are very handy, and it's pretty. I keep coming back to it despite my resolutions to wait for a stable build.