When you break the debug in Visual Studio (through the Break All menu or the shortcut CTRL+ALT+BREAK by default), it jumps to the line of the call return.
(In my case, using winforms, it jumps to the Application.Run(); line of the Program.cs file).
It's kind of annoying when you're debugging a method and every time you hit Break All, the focus is set back on a file you weren't working on.
Is it possible to disable that jump? I couldn't find any option in the Debugging part of the VS options.
It's not "jumping" - it's breaking to the currently executing line of code. This is the behavior, and is not configurable.
If you want to have it stop at a specific line of code where you're working, you can just set a break point there, instead. This will cause it to break at your breakpoint as soon as it executes the code there.
Related
Currently i'm on a project which has some main loop which is quite slow. Putting a breakpoint into it implicates i have to press F9 each time, and there are a lot of iterations. What i imagine is to see the program 'move' on one of my screens, without wondering if it is stuck or not.
I already have log outputs and so on, my question really focuses on this 'show debug without stop' feature.
What i imagine is to see in this main loop the current line highlighted as i it was a line-by-line execution, but without breakpoints and without going down in the subcalls.
Does any of you know a way to do something like this or wish the same thing ?
Thanks !
Your Debug tool window has a "Mute breakpoints" control:
If you leave it ON, your application won't stop at breakpoints. You can switch it off later once you reach the point where you actually want to start debugging (e.g. mute breakpoints while the app is doing all the initial loading tasks, while you navigate to the screen you want to debug etc. and then unmute them).
I'm not quite sure this is it but , how about disabling focus on breakpoint:
Put your cursor on the line you'd like to breakpoint and hit ctrl-shift-f8 (on a pc). You can choose not to suspend when a breakpoint is hit, and/or you can add logging that the breakpoint was triggered. If you need to, you can add a condition that must be met before the breakpoint is triggered.
Here's what this looks like for me:
When I am debugging in Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 my "Registers" window shows no data available. What can I do to fix this?
As Sneftel stated, you cannot inspect data in the debugger unless you break the execution of the process. During execution, things would be changing far too quickly for any data display to be meaningful.
You can use the "Pause" button in the toolbar to break execution, and then you will see everything in the debugger: the current source line, the contents of registers, your "watch" variables, the full contents of memory in the "Memory" window, etc.
You can also set a breakpoint on a particular line of code, and then execution will break once that point is reached.
Once paused, you can then single-step through your program's code. This means that one line of code (the very next one) will be executed, and then the program will break again so that you can see everything in the debugger. This is an excellent troubleshooting technique—one that you should be well-acquainted with. In fact, I recommend that you single-step through every line of code that you write, just to make sure that it works correctly. You can also modify the contents of registers and variables (or, really, any location in memory) while you are single-stepping, giving yourself a way to test potential bug fixes or even introduce bugs (e.g., invalid input) to see how your code handles them. The default keyboard shortcut for single-step is F11.
You'll find more information about using the debugger, and the available keyboard shortcuts, here on MSDN. As you can see, that article confirms my answer:
Most debugger features, such as viewing variable values in the Locals window or evaluating expressions in the Watch window, are available only while the debugger is paused (also called break mode). When the debugger is paused, your app state is suspended while functions, variables, and objects remain in memory. While in break mode, you can examine the elements' positions and states to look for violations or bugs.
(Edit-and-continue is not available in assembly projects. You will need to stop execution and rebuild if you want to make changes to your code.)
For those with the "No data available" message, you can right click in the Registers window and choose what you want to see (UC, MMX, SSE, etc). It seems like by default there's nothing selected in Visual Studio 2019. At least, on mine there was nothing selected.
I want to see which line my program is using. For example, the program is on line 231, but I don't know that. Is there a way to do this?
While running in debug mode from Visual Studio you can:
Set a breakpoint. The debugger will kick in and pause execution on
that line.
Press the "Pause" button on the VS toolbar. Program
execution will immediately pause and the debugger will show you what
line its on.
Write code involving System.Diagnostics.Debugger (such as Debugger.Break();) where you beed the debugger to pause execution. This method has the added bonus of not relying on Visual Studio to be the debugger - if you're one of those weird-os. ;-)
Tools->Options->Text Editor->C# and the check line numbers.
Then set a breakpoint.
Only thing that comes to mind is for you to put a comment at the end of each line with the line number, then look at the comment as you step through. But that would only work in debug mode and only after hitting a breakpoint.
One major problem trying this in regular mode, running as normal, is that C# does not run. It compiles into byte code, and there is not a one-to-one correlation between C# lines and IL lines. So I'm afraid in that sense, this cannot be done.
Is it possible to set a starting point for the debugger so that every debugging session
will start immediately from that point (instead of starting from the beginning of the code)?
Or to express it differently:
Isn't it possible to somehow store everything until the breakpoint so that next time the debugger could just instantly resume to that specific breakpoint (instead of starting from the beginning of the code and pausing at the breakpoint)?. Is there any debugger that can do this?
I am using Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012.
Thank you.
Use a Debugger in visual studio.
In your code, click on the line number, you will see a dot on the line.
When you run the program, it will 'pause' at the line you specify, you can then walk through your program line by line from there
You can use a breakpoint at a line that you want to inspect.
You have a description how to do it here.
You could attach a debugger to a running process, but i'm afraid that it will be on a random place of execution. You could make a wait for a key or button press in your code and attach to your program before continuing.
No. It would have to run the code up to the point you want to get all the variables etc in the right state. If you just set a breakpoint where you're interested from and hit F5 it should get there quickly enough.
If it doesn't get there quickly enough, jot down the variables used and make some unit tests round the troublesome functions instead. That will skip the 10 minutes.
Normally in Visual Studio, a watch cannot be evaluated unless the debugger is stopped at a breakpoint. Is there a trick or add-on to make Visual Studio evaluate a watch while the application is still running? For example, evaluate the watch every time execution passes a point in the code while it's still running and without changing the code to insert statements like Debug.WriteLine.
Not sure this is possible, but I thought I'd ask.
Yes, this is possible. Set a breakpoint at the location where you'd want to see the value. Right-click the breakpoint and choose "When Hit...". Tick "Print a message" and write an expression like { value }. The message is displayed in the Output window while your program runs.
I would do that using compiler directives.
#if DEBUG
Debug.WriteLine
#end if
No this is not possible to do. The evaluation feature in Visual Studio is a stack frame based mechanism. That is that every evaluation is done in the context of a given stack frame (as viewed through the stack window). When the program is running the set of stack frames is currently changing and hence it's not possible to do a stable evaluation.
Additionally there are other limitations in the CLR which prevent this from managed code. It's not possible for instance to execute a function unless the debugee process is in a very specific state.