“Hidden Secrets” of the Visual Studio .NET debugger? [closed]

Answer 1

Some useful shortcut keys.

• F11 to step into a method.
• Shift-F11 to step out of a method.
• F10 to step over a method.

Answer 2

You can load windbg extensions into the Visual Studio debugger and use them from the immediate window.

Answer 3

As a web developer who works with Web Services that are within the same solution as my front-end code most of the time, I found the ability to "attach" to a process to be a HUGE time saver.

Before I found this hidden gem, I would always have to set a breakpoint on some front-end code that called a web service method and step into it. Now that I know about this trick/feature I can easily set breakpoints on any part of my code that I want to which saves me loads of time and effort.

Answer 4

One of my favorite features is the "When Hit..." option available on a breakpoint. You can print a message with the value of a variable along with lots of other information, such as:

• $ADDRESS - Current Instruction
• $CALLER - Previous Function Name
• $CALLSTACK - Call Stack
• $FUNCTION - Current Function Name
• $PID - Process ID
• $PNAME - Process Name
• $TID - Thread ID
• $TNAME - Thread Name

You can also have it run a macro, but I've never used that feature.

Answer 5

You can right-click an object in the Watch window and click Make Object ID.

It will assign that instance an ID number, allowing you to see, in a complicated object graph, which objects refer to the same instance.

Answer 6

You can open and place a breakpoint in a source file if the file belongs to another solution (external file). The debugger can still hit the breakpoint. No need to open another Visual Studio instance to debug the external file. Helpful in debugging web services which you source to. This works as long as all the sources are current and compiled.