I would like to find a way to see what happens while my XAML is being loaded. What classes are being instantiated, and in what order? Which properties are being set, to what values, and in what order? Which methods are being called (e.g. BeginInit, EndInit, etc.), in what order, and with what parameters? That sort of thing.
(If anyone's curious as to why, it's because the XAML loader is doing something magic that I can't duplicate in code, and I'm trying to figure out what it is.)
My first idea: Configure VS to debug into the .NET source code, and single-step through the XAML-loading code to see what happens. Unfortunately, source stepping has been busted for months, and there's no sign of that changing.
My second idea: Make my own classes that descend from WPF classes, override OnPropertyChanged, and do a Debug.WriteLine. Unfortunately, one of the classes I want to know about (BitmapImage) is sealed, so I can't descend from it.
Anyone have other ideas on how I could get some visibility into what the XAML loader is doing? Are there any tools (profiler, maybe?) that could give me a call graph? Is there a way to turn on some kind of logging in the XAML loader? Thoughts / suggestions?
Edit: The article Steve linked to does have the answer, though their sample code makes every event get displayed twice. For reference, here's how to make this work in code (no app.config changes required). Add these lines before the InitializeComponent() call (or type both lines into the Immediate window in the debugger):
PresentationTraceSources.Refresh();
PresentationTraceSources.MarkupSource.Switch.Level = SourceLevels.All;
This will cause detailed output to show up in VS's Output window, including the properties that get set magically behind the scenes.
You can trace a lot of the binding and loading with system.diagnostics. I've found a number of problems using this namespace. Its unwieldy like everything else in WPF, but it works. You can see what's getting set and where.
Related
A while ago I was watching a video where the presenter cleaned up his code by highlighting already written code, and choosing some option that converted the code into a method. It also automatically recognized what parameters needed to be passed, and all he needed to do was name the method.
Does anyone know what this option is called? I have looked all over and cannot find it. I can't remember the video either.
It was probably refactoring. Highlight your code, right click and select "Quick Actions and Refactorings", then select "Extract Method". (Or choose Edit Menu > Refactor > Extract Method.)
You'll be able to change the name of the new method. Visual Studio does its best to figure out what types are needed as parameters, what should be returned, what visibility for the method is needed, etc. You'll still want to double check the result and make sure it does what you want.
Yes, it's called refactoring your code. You can extract a method by right clicking on the highlighted method and choosing Extract Method from context menu. VS will extract the method and set the parameters for you.
Does Xcode have a way to show the caller function of a method? I want to know all of the calling functions of a method in a class. A solution would be to find the method in the project, but sometimes different classes have methods with the same name - That could find us a method we're not looking for..
Many other IDEs have this capability, such as Visual C++ 2003/2005/2008,Eclipse ...
Can you do this in XCode?
Xcode 4.4 intrudced this functionality:
New Features in Xcode 4.4 (Scroll down to 'Find and Search Additions')
Move your cursor on top of the function you are interested in
Open the Assistant editor(⌃ +⌘+Enter)
On the top of the assistant editor, Select 'Callers'
You will see a list of all the function that's calling your function
Not the as effective as other IDEs, but does the job.
Yes. Set a breakpoint inside your method, then when it breaks, there are two spots to see a stack. First is in Xcode's "console" area (usually the bottom middle), there is a top-bar which may not immediately appear to be navigable, but it is a select-style UI control which has the entire stack in it. Selecting a different level shows you that scope's variables, etc. and pops your editor to that exact file (where you can mouse-over variables to see their in-memory real-time values). Second is in the left-hand area (where you normally browse files). There is another tab there (besides the file browser) for exactly this purpose. There is a slider at the bottom which controls how many "steps" in the stack you see; clicking on one has a similar affect.
For simple refactoring such as method re-naming, you can use the contextual-menu when you right-click a selected method-name, and Xcode will replace all identical selectors in your project. However, this does not address what you mentioned about different classes having methods with the same signature. It does, however, give you a very nice interface for reviewing the changes in-context and easily accepting or rejecting them one at a time.
It might be noted, however, that changing method signatures often may be a sign of poor design, and particularly if you have to do it with methods which have the same signature on different classes (which are not "siblings" and therefore should both get the rename)
I'm implementing a Visual Studio Language Service for a custom scripting language used internally at my company, and I've run into an issue with the navigation bar implemented as a subclass of TypeAndMemberDropdownBars. The subclass is created by my LanguageService subclass' LanguageService.CreateDropDownHelper method.
In the OnSynchronizeDropdowns method I'm iterating through the types defined in the file and adding DropDownMembers to the passed-in array to fill out the navigation bar. The issue I'm seeing is that the first item in the array is being duplicated and placed at the end of the listing by code that I don't have access to. This extra item does not behave correctly when selected (nothing happens), but doesn't seem to cause any other issues; the rest of the items in the list work fine. Additionally, this only seems to happen for the type dropdown box - the members dropdown box does not display this behavior.
I'm hoping someone else has seen and resolved this issue and could provide some assistance. Thanks!
Turns out this was caused by me calling LanguageService.SynchronizeDropdowns from my LanguageService.ParseSource method, which was being called on a background thread. I've fixed the problem by setting a flag when ParseSource does a Check parse, and then implementing a check for that flag in my LanguageService.OnIdle function that will call SynchronizeDropdowns. It's now working as expected!
A better solution is to implement the LanguageService.OnParseComplete callback, and call SynchronizeDropdowns from there. OnParseComplete is always called from the main thread, so this prevents any synchronization issues from coming up, and also keeps you from having to keep track of whether or not you need to call SynchronizeDropdowns().
Is there some way to make the Watch window display all inherited properties and fields in one long flat list, rather than hidden behind a nested "base" node?
I'm debugging some C# code that makes massive use of inheritance - some of the properties I want to watch are behind three levels of "base" in the Watch window. This would be more or less bearable if I just wanted to examine a single such object, but I'm actually looking at a tree of them...
see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jaredpar/archive/2010/02/19/flattening-class-hierarchies-when-debugging-c.aspx
UPDATE: I wrote a commercial tool called OzCode that solves this problem. The idea is that if you're interested in a property of the base class, you can "Star" that property, which causes the property to appear at the top of members list, and also in the text of its parent.
So for example, in the following scenario, I had to expand two base nodes to get to see the properties I wanted, "Important" and "Interesting":
But once I star these properties, they will always appear at the top, even when viewing variables of the Derived type, so I'll see:
These stars are persisted and will be shown whenever you view a an object of that type in the DataTip or QuickWatch window from that moment on, so the next time you a variable of that type, you won't need to expand those "base" nodes. And because starred values appear as the parent node's text, if you're looking at a tree datastructure of these heavily nested objects (as you stated you were), you will be able to see these properties without even expanding the nodes at all.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm the co-author of the tool I've described here.
Not as such. You see, it is a feature! The ability to see where a property comes from is important most of the time.
I understand your pain though. There are some work arounds. First, you can just put the object.property in the watch window. This will just display the property you are looking for. It is great for digging into a specific property but not so much for getting all the others.
You can also try (BaseClass)object. This will cast it to the base object that contains the property (properties?) you are looking for. Again it is great for looking a a specific subset of properties but completly hides all the others.
Good luck and good hunting.
My project has maybe 130 controls (total of all labels, textboxes, etc.) in an SSTab (4 tabs). The project loads fine, it runs fine, I don't see a single error or warning at any point, but when I save the form with the SStab on it, the SStab data isn't saved (it is completely gone). Normally the relevant portion of the .frm file looks like this:
Begin TabDlg.SSTab SSTab1
Height = 8895
[1550 more lines of code for all the controls]
Width = 540
End
Begin VB.Menu FileMenu
But lately it's getting cropped to:
Begin TabDlg.SSTab SSTab1
Begin VB.Menu FileMenu
This is very frustrating! In my VB IDE, the frame, sstab, and all the controls are there, editable, running/compiling fine, no error messages at any point, but when you save the file, 1550 lines of precious sstab data just disappears - again, with no warning or error messages. So if you exit and restart the IDE, you get a form load error because 60% of the code is now missing. The log file points to the first error it finds (in this case a Begin TabDlg with no End) - there's no other info in it. (The log file was generated after the code was deleted and saved, so it makes sense that it wouldn't be helpful.)
When I first posted this question, I thought it had to do with the number of controls, because it appeared after I added a control, and in my first few tests, seemed to disappear when that control (or other controls) was deleted. Now I can't seem to get that form to save under any circumstances, even when I delete many controls (bringing the number of controls far below where it was when it was last stable).
I also tried deleting the SStab and moving all the controls to 4 different frames. I successfully did that in the IDE, but when I saved, a huge chunk of the data (starting with a slider control) was missing. So I have no fraking idea what is going on.
The problem is reproducible on two different PCs, so it doesn't appear to be a hardware/corrupt software VB install issue.
Has anyone else run into something like this?
Create a UserControl for each tab. That makes editing MUCH easier. It also allows you to nicely modularize the code, so each tab lives in its own file, and it'll allow you to reuse tabs elsewhere if you want.
Sounds horrible, never heard of anything like that.
Presumably you aren't getting an error log file from VB6 when you load the form into the IDE before it gets corrupted? The log file has the same filename as the form file but with a .log filename extension. For example, if errors occurred when loading Myform.frm, Visual Basic would create a log file named Myform.log. The error messages you might see there are documented in the manual.
Have a look in the Windows Event Log, see whether it records any interesting problems against the VB6 IDE?
Are you using any weird controls? Maybe one of them is somehow corrupting the FRM or FRX. FRM files are just text as you obviously know & the format is documented in the VB6 manual. Can you see any corruption in the FRM in a text editor? If you remove any properties defined in the FRX, does it still fail.
I think I would try creating a new project and a new form, and then use the IDE to copy and paste all the control definitions into it - no code. Play with the new form, see whether it has the same problem. Maybe you can recreate the form this way without the problem. If the new form does have the problem, do the same thing but only take half the controls. Maybe you can find a problem control by "binary search".
I get the same problem when attempting to save a form when the .FRM is writable but the .FRX is read-only
Not sure if this is the issue, but on a VB6 form, there is a limit to 255 (or is it 256) named controls. Perhaps you are running into that?
One way around that limitation is to use control arrays. For example, if you had 10 labels, instead of label1, label2, label3, etc, you could do label(0) through label(9), and use up only one named control.
The other thing worth mentioning about the SSTAB is the way it shows/hides controls. While it may appear that the controls are on separate tabs, what is really happening is that the controls are getting moved waaaayyyyy to the left (and consequently out of view). Perhaps with so many components, the SSTAB is choking on this in the IDE as it tries to render the controls in design view?
Again, not sure if this is the issue, but I know these two tidbits are relatively unknown.
So the SAVE function is not working.
I suspect one of the components you are placing on the tab strip is the culprit.
So ..
1) Take an inventory of each and every kind of component you are placing on the form
2) eliminate one (kind), SAVE
3) Did it SAVE?
-> Yes = that was the problematic control
-> No = return to step 2, but pick another kind
Of course, its important to remove all controls of a certain kind in step #2 (for example, ALL labels, or ALL textboxes, etc).
I have never heard of this happening however.
You are not alone! I've seen this problem. . .in fact I'm dealing it right now, which is what brought me to this site.
I've been working with VB since '94 (VB3) and I first saw this problem about 5 or 6 years ago, while using VB6. My solution then, was not unlike some of the suggestions that you have recieved from the good folks who've responded above: throw out the existing file and rebuild the form in a new file. I did that back and the affected form has worked ever since.
My current problem is appearing in another, much newer form, and the replace/rebuild option (performed about a month ago) only worked for about three weeks. Now the problem is back and each new iteration of the file gets corrupted very quickly. Following the reply above regarding the total number of allowable controls, I'm looking into just how many controls I have. . .and, as it happens, I was in the process of consolidating the primary the buttons and menus into control arrays, simply because it was going to streamline their management.
I can also confirm your observations about moving the project to a second PC. . . I've done that too, and problem persists. Moreover, I can add that I have moved the project from one shared storage system to another to no avail. (The original storage location was on a drive mounted to a Win-tel system and the new location is on a UNIX-based NAS!)
Just rebuilt the file again and checked: Controls.Count = 62, so I am no where near the 255 control limit mentioned previously. This is indeed strange! (Not to mention furstrating!)