How do I set a breakpoint on every access to a class

Question

When working with third party systems, especially very configurable systems that dynamically load providers, controllers, components and so on, I sometimes just want to know

Answer 1

You can click Debug > New Breakpoint > Breakpoint at Function. Ctrl-B brings you there directly. It'll allow you to break at a specific function.

During debugging, you can see in the Breakpoints-window whether the method is found and will be hit (red round icon) or not (white with circle icon, as of disabled breakpoint), just as with normal breakpoints.

Answer 2

Not the most elegant, but if you Ctrl+F public then you can spam between F9 [set breakpoint] then F3 [find next] to set a breakpoint on every public entry point into the class.

You might also want to add breakpoints for protected and internal entry points, and any explicit interface implementations (declarations that don't have public)

Answer 3

I just made a Visual Studio 2010 addin for this. Check this: http://weblogs.asp.net/uruit/archive/2011/08/04/visual-studio-2010-addin-setting-a-class-breakpoint.aspx

Update

This project now lives on Github. Feel free to contribute.

Answer 4

At one time (pre VS2008) you could set a breakpoint at every line in a file by select all (ctrl-a) followed by set breakpoint (F9).

To set just one on the entry to every method takes, if I recall correctly, a macro. Check out John Robbins' blog as a possible source: http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/

[EDIT: ctrl-A, F9 doesn't work in 2010 or 2008, so it must be an earlier version I remember this from]