Debugger Tips, Tricks and Tools #12

re: Debugger Tips, Tricks and Tools #12

Roger Wolff — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:20:19 GMT

Just because I am curious...can you explain the long answer for "The short answer is that this type of solution requires support from the .NET runtime."?

This functionality seems useful, and I don't understand why it couldn't be done with existing CLR functionality. It seems like VS could do something very similar to what your macro is doing (or perhaps even easier with setting a single breakpoint before the call, and then issuing a step in), and keeping track of all kinds of good debugger state (maybe keeping the breakpoint hidden, or not stopping if that breakpoint gets hit from a different thread, etc...)

re: Debugger Tips, Tricks and Tools #12

JimGries — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:52:05 GMT

What I was referring to was the ability to exactly replicate the behavior and *general implementation* that is done by native C++. However, after talking about it a bit more my team decided that it might be doable without changes to the CLR. However, we also questioned whether that was the right solution anyway.

That being said the macro I presented is closer to what I think developers would want... even native C++ developers. So we are considering features along these lines in a future version of VS.

Further comments are welcome.

Speaking of 'Step Into Specific'

davidbak — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:15:13 GMT

Speaking of 'Step Into Specific' - one of the greatest unknown features of the VC++ debugger: It isn't assigned a keyboard shortcut, probably because it just pops up a submenu and doesn't have a real UI. So - being that I am totally lame at writing a VS macro - how would you write a macro to pop up the menu system with "Step Into Specific" highlighted and the fly-out-popup-menu out, ready to select an item with the arrow keys? Thanks!