Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed

The Trace Class

The Trace class, which is also exposed by the System.Diagnostics namespace, works exactly like the Debug class. One important difference influences the building process. The output of the Debug class is included in the build output only if the DEBUG constant is defined, whereas the Trace class’ output is included in the build output only if the TRACE constant is defined. When you build your applications with the Debug configuration active, both constants are defined, so both outputs are included. The Release configuration defines instead only the TRACE constant, so it includes only this output.