Debugging

In this new installment, you'll discover how to write an even more robust version of a debugger visualizer using WIndows Presentation Foundation (WPF). You'll learn how to visualize additional data types as well as how to change the value of variables.

There are lots of good examples of creating a debugger visualizer for Visual Studio, but one thing that this is common is that all of them are written using Windows form. It is, however, possible to make a debugger visualizer in WPF, and thus display data in a much more sophisticated way using modern technology.

Learn about several features relevant to developers in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, such as parallel programming, XSLT debugging, new ASP.NET features, and new VB.NET and C# features that include the Chart control, XSD Designer, Lambda Expressions, and optional parameters.

Code is run in a debugger for two main reasons: examining the branches of code that are being executed, and examining data values to determine why the code is behaving in a certain manner. Inspecting data values can be significantly improved by customizing the debug information. See how that can be done in the Visual C++ debugger.

Are you tired of hard-coding function names in trace messages? Have you ever used cut and paste to copy a trace statement and forgot to change the function name? There'll be no more wild goose chases because of bad function names when you determine the function name dynamically.

For certain data sensitive web pages, you probably do not want users to use a web browser's back button because they may retrieve and repost a page from the browser's cache, which may cause an unexpected problem and sometimes crash your application. This is the so-called back button problem. Learn how to get rid of the little bug in an ASP .NET way.

For complex data types, the traditional display offered by debug windows is inadequate. Visual C++ 2005 makes a dramatic upgrade to the variable display, offering a number of improvements in the way you can examine data during a debug session.

All the best software development practices and testing efforts in the world cannot guarantee that there are no intermittent or unexplainable application issues when in production. Worst case scenario being application hangs and crashes. This article shows how to take dumps of .NET applications and analyze them. This helps developers to understand the issue and find the faulty code.

Discover how to add functionality for debugging and tracking an application's execution path.

Paul uses a Blackjack program to demonstrates how to debug a hosted assembly.

NUnit is an open source, testing framework for all .NET languages. The big payoff is that NUnit can run tests automatically, and it can be integrated as part of your build, test, and deployment lifecycle. See it in action with Visual Basic .NET...

Have you ever found yourself wishing there was a way to set breakpoints on all the functions in a particular source file?