I have some code which generates a large quantity of ArgumentExceptions on one particular line (which is in a different developer's code, so I can't just change it), which are then caught and handled appropriately.
I'm trying to debug ArgumentExceptions which are happening in a different section of code (and are then caught and handled, so I can't just look at unhandled exceptions).
Is there some way to ignore the ArgumentExceptions originating from that particular other line of code, while still breaking on ArgumentExceptions which are thrown elsewhere?
You might be able to do this, but it depends on how the code you want to debug is located relative to the other developer's code, and whether or not you can modify (but not commit your changes) to his code.
The first thing you'll want to do is, at least temporarily, go to menu Tools -> Options -> Debugging in Visual Studio, and tick the "Just My Code" box. I assume this is available even in Express editions, but it may not be, and if it's not available for you I'm afraid the rest of what I have to say probably won't help.
Anyway, once you have that ticked, you will no longer see break-on-throw notifications for code that isn't "yours." This means code that is from an assembly not in your .sln, or code marked with the [DebuggerNonUserCode] attribute from System.Diagnostics. What I usually do then is temporarily decorate the offending methods with [DebuggerNonUserCode] until I'm done debugging what I need to debug, and then revert those changes before checking in to souce control.
It's not as elegant as I'd like (I'd love a "never break on throws from this site again" checkbox in the exception assistant), but it's better than nothing.
I believe there may be other debugger settings that could interact with how "Just My Code" works, so if this doesn't work for you let me know and I'll try to get a more accurate picture of what my settings look like when I do this.
If you are talking about the "Break On Throw" exception feature then no there is not. It is strictly a type based feature only and does not have any way to control for what section of the code throws the exception.
Your best bet is to just place breakpoints on all of the lines which throw or temporarily suspend throwing an exception from the one place that you care about.
If you know how you are calling it, I would set the break point in your code and then step into (F11) from there. You could also smack the programmer until they fix their code, which would have the effect of making you feel better (unless you are a pacifist) and maybe they won't have so many ArgumentExceptions in their code (which would probably make you feel better even if you are a pacifist).
Sounds like using exceptions as flow control. If the one you're trying to debug occurs later in the program, you can try to attach the debugger later, or you can wait until after the program is running to turn on breaking when an ArgumentException is thrown.
Try to limit the scope as well - if the exception you're interested in derives from but is not exactly ArgumentException, break on that one instead.
Tell the other developer to fix his code.
Edit: In .NET 4, you can attach a handler to the AppDomain.FirstChanceException event, filter out non-ArgumentException excepitons and filter out the bad one based on the call stack.
The links in the comments are great.
i think Conditional Breakpoints are what you're looking for here. You can do this by right clicking your breakpoint and clicking the Condition... menu item.
Related
Is there a way to run my .fs file with either a breakpoint or a command like System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch() in it so that I can use FSI to examine values, apply functions to them, plot them, etc.?
I know this question has been asked before but I tried the answers and could not make them work. Clear instructions or a link to a write-up explaining the process would be of great help not only to myself, but also, I believe, to all beginners.
Unfortunately, you cannot hit a breakpoint and jump into FSI. The context of a running .NET program is quite different to that of an interactive FSI session and they are not compatible enough to just switch between one or the other. I can understand an expectation of this kind of debugging when coming from other dynamic/interpreted languages such as JavaScript, Python etc. It is a really powerful feature.
As you have already noted, you can use the VS immediate window but you need to use its C#-like syntax and respect its limitations. Also, since it's not F#, you need to understand the F# to .NET conversion in order to make full use of it.
If you use Paket for dependency management in your project you have another option: Add generate_load_scripts: true to your paket.dependencies. This will give you a file like .paket\load\net452\main.group.fsx, which you can load into FSI to get all of the dependencies for your project. However, you are still responsible for loading in your own source files and building up some state similar to what is found at your desired breakpoint.
To hit a break point, in visual studio or visual studio code, you just click to the left of the line number you want to set your breakpoint. This is very much a supported feature in .fs files.
I'm having a weird problem with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate:
One of my Nunit(2.6.2) test cases is failing in the debug mode but passing in the run mode, as if we had completely different code paths for the two scenarios.
Is this a known bug? or is there some option in vs I'm missing?
Please enlighten me!
Thanks a lot.
EDIT - MORE INFORMATION
My application submits some requests to a dll written by a group of people within the organization. The dll does some computation and returns the results back to me.
In a test case exploring the dll's behavior (e.g. submit a request having certain parameter, check the dll's output), running the Nunit test works fine, but debugging the test case gives me an error - an exception was thrown from within that dll.
IMPORTANT: Running/debugging another test case gives me consistent results.
So, for the weird test case:
1, either the dll is good, and something under the debug mode breaks the dll
2, or, the dll has a bug, which is triggered by something under the debug mode.
To my knowledge, the ONLY difference between running and debugging a piece of code in visual studio is that, when debugging, a pdb file is loaded while when running it's not. Essentially, a symbol table is loaded to identify code execution.
Then the issue doesn't make sense in the first place - why would loading a symbol table affect the dll's behavior? (It's unfair to ask anyone to give an explanation without seeing any code; however, since it's corporate prop. code, I can't show it here. Please, if you've ever encountered such things in your career, do share with me what happened in your case - let's hope my problem has the same cause so that I can actually know what went wrong. Thanks)
Are you using code coverage?
If so, try disabling it and run. It will probably work.
For more details, check: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/aba3d58f-f19f-4742-b960-8ac2be29bb88/unit-test-passes-when-in-debug-but-fails-when-run
You may have run into a situation where you're taking the same code path, but the results are subtly different in debug vs non-debug due to optimizations. There are a couple of distinct possibilities here:
Your code has a subtle bug, e.g. a race condition
Your test is being overly specific, e.g. for floating point comparisons where you should use a tolerance
It's a pain not being able to debug, but I suggest you add logging throughout the method and the test so you can see what's going on. (And hope that the logging itself doesn't change the test result, which is also possible...)
Thank you for your response.
I've identified the reason: it's due to a false parameter which drives the dll nuts. My bad.
It still doesn't answer the question why the behavior at debug time goes crazy, but good while running the test case.
However, I guess, since the parameter is wrong in the first place, I can't really blame the dll for going nuts. Anyway, when I passed in the correct param, all went good.
Thanks a lot guys.
I recently added a new project to my Visual Studio 2008 solution. Now, as I make edits in the new project, I receive a ton (~50) of type checking errors - indicating that an assembly reference may be missing. However, when I actually build the solution, the errors go away. As best I can tell, my dependencies are set and the build order is correct. What could be wrong?
It doesn't prevent me from building and deploying, but it's a major nuisance. It makes it hard to tell when I actually have introduced new errors (until I do compile). Thus, it erodes the usefulness of having the error window do static analysis.
Example, one of the 50 errors is this:
"The type of namespace name 'PersonManager' does not exist in the namespace 'Gideon' (are you missing an assembly reference?"
In reference to this line of code:
Gideon.PersonManager pm = new Gideon.PersonManager()
PersonManager is underlined in both places, and when I right click the type and selected 'find all references' I get an alert box that says "Cannot navigate to PersonManager"
However, the references are definitely there, because when I build, it works.
One other detail is that there is a mixture of C# and VB.net code, though I don't think that should make a difference.
Well, yes, the IntelliSense parser is not an exact replica of the C# compiler. It has a very different job to do, it needs to do something meaningful while the code is utterly broken since you are editing it. Tough assignment, they did a tremendous job with it. But as a side-effect, it can fail to parse things that are actually legal. It's quite rare but not unheard of, seen it myself a few times.
This won't go anywhere concrete until you at least give us some idea of what kind of errors you are seeing, along with a snippet of the code that generates them. You didn't do so, I can only recommend that you select another window so you don't have to look at them.
I had the same problem. I had a project in my solution that was causing the problem - I removed the project from the solution, then added a reference to that project in the main solution and the errors went away. Strange that it only happened on 1 machine. Opening the solution on another machine was fine...
Googling this yields lots of entries on HOW TO step through Framework code. I'm trying to find out how NOT TO step into.
First check: Yes, "Enable Just My Code" is checked in the Tools->Options->Debugging. That is supposed to keep VS2010 from looking for source code when you are stepping through a framework function (or anything else that you don't have the source to, as I understand it.)
It's not. I'm trying to step through my code, using F11, and, if I get careless and don't switch to F10 (to step over a function call) when I get to a function that is in a library, then it throws up a dialog asking where the source for that call is, and when I cancel out of it (since I don't have the source), it aborts my Debug, and I have to start all over.
How can I avoid this behavior. As I understand the documentation, this is NOT the way it is supposed to work. And where do we go for support when it's not working?
You can do this by simply not loading symbols for the framework.
In the Symbols window, there is an option for "Automatically symbols for:" depending on the option you choose you can explicitly exclude those modules, or only specify your own modules.
I assume you are using the All modules, unless excluded option, so you should exclude the framework modules.
If you actually own the framework you can also add a StepThrough attribute to any framework functions you want to step through. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.debuggerstepthroughattribute.aspx.
I have been tracing a BAD_ACCESS error using NSZombieEnabled. As error I get returned:
*** -[MyDocument respondsToSelector:]: message sent to deallocated instance 0x2671b0
I do know what this means,however what surprises me is that I don't call this function anywhere, not in MyDocument.m nor in any imported files.To be exact, I don't call this at all in my whole project. The debugger will not go to the actual code that causes the error, but only shows the assembly code, which, when I click on it, gives me and even bigger list of not understandable numbers.
Does anyone have an idea where this weird "respondsToSelector" could come from? Maybe from frameworks I am using? I am really confused.
Thanks for any help!
respondsToSelector: is widely used in frameworks. For instance, if your class is a delegate or data source (highly likely for MyDocument) the delegating object will use it to determine which delegate methods you support.
In general, the way to find out where a problem like this is happening is to set a breakpoint on objc_exception_throw() (Run->Show->Breakpoints, double-click where it says “Double-Click for Symbol”, type objc_exception_throw) and run under the debugger (Build->Build and Debug - Breakpoints On).