Professional Visual Studio 2017

31Debugging with Breakpoints

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Using breakpoints, conditional breakpoints, and tracepoints to pause code execution
• Controlling the program execution during debug by stepping through code
• Modifying your code while it runs using the Edit and Continue feature

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter can be found at www.wrox.com by searching for this book’s ISBN number (978-1-119-40458-3). The code and any related support files are located in their own folder for this chapter.

Long gone are the days when debugging an application involved adding superfluous output statements to track down where an application was failing. Visual Studio 2017 provides a rich, interactive debugging experience that includes breakpoints, tracepoints, and the Edit and Continue feature. This chapter covers how you can use these features to debug your application.

BREAKPOINTS

A breakpoint is used to pause, or break, an application at a particular point of execution. An application that has been paused is in Break mode, causing a number of the Visual Studio 2017 windows to become active. For example, you can use the Watch window to view variable values. Figure 31-1 shows a breakpoint added to the constructor of the Customer class. The application breaks on this line if the Customer class constructor is called.

FIGURE 31-1 ...