10-4 Episode 28: An Introduction to the Historical Debugger

Posted By: Brian Keller | Jul 22nd, 2009 @ 10:54 AM | 93,925 Views | 23 Comments
The new Historical Debugger coming in Visual Studio Team System 2010 promises to revolutionize the way you debug managed applications. You can think of it as something of a VCR for your debugger; "rewind" the debugging trace to examine the state of your application at various points in time so you can all-but-eliminate the guesswork about where to place your breakpoints prior to pressing F5.

This quick overview screencast will give you just a taste of the capabilities offered by the Historical Debugger. For more information check out:
http://www.tinyurl.com/ProteusBehindTheScenes
http://blogs.msdn.com/HabibH

For more 10-4 episodes, be sure to visit:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/10-4

Visual Studio Topic Area on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/VisualStudio

Visual Studio 2010 Beta:
http://tinyurl.com/VS2010Beta1

10-4! Over and out!
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#Jul 22nd, 2009 @ 11:03 AM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change

This is one of the coolest new features in VSTS 2010. Thanks for the great demo and concise explanation, Brian.

C

#Jul 22nd, 2009 @ 11:53 AM
W3bbo
W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

The video description says it's in VSTS2010, will it be available in the other SKUs? We Professional users don't like to feel left-out Smiley

#Jul 22nd, 2009 @ 11:55 AM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change

Sorry about my typo (fixed). I don't know the answer to your question. Brian does though Smiley
C

#Jul 22nd, 2009 @ 3:09 PM
tschlarm
tschlarm

A question when running on a 64-bit platform (Vista/Win7-x64).

 

Did I understand you correctly, that F5-Historical Debugging will not work if I'm running Vista/Win7-x64? Only post analysis on this platform.

 

Is that because VS2010 is still a 32-bit app running in the WOW layer on x-64?

#Jul 22nd, 2009 @ 5:20 PM
briankel
briankel

Hi W3bbo,

 

The SKU plans haven't been locked yet (or if they have, marketing hasn't told me Smiley ) but unless something changes this feature will be limited to people using the Development or Suite editions of Team System.

 

I know this will cause some angst since it's such a cool feature, but that's the business of building and selling developer tools... gotta pay the bills.

 

Brian

#Jul 22nd, 2009 @ 5:25 PM
briankel
briankel

Hi Tschlarm,

 

There's one workaround that I just found out from the product team, and that is that you can set your build configuration to x86 and the F5 scenario will work. F5 doesn't work when your app is targeting x64.

 

The other scenarios outlined on Habib's blog (such as being able to collect historical debugger trace data while your automated or manual tests are running) will work with x86 or x64.

 

Brian

#Jul 22nd, 2009 @ 9:20 PM
Habib Heydarian
Habib Heydarian

To add to Brian's point about 64-bit support, in the F5 scenario, our collection mechanism (i.e. how we collect information about a process) is specific to 32-bit processes. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to implement 64-bit support and had to make a hard cut. You can bet that 64-bit support is one of our top priorities after the VS2010 release.

 

Thanks,

Habib Heydarian.

 

#Jul 23rd, 2009 @ 5:12 AM
W3bbo
W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Such as in a Service Pack release for VS or will it have to wait until VS2014?

#Jul 23rd, 2009 @ 8:34 AM
Habib Heydarian
Habib Heydarian

The scope of the work to support 64-bit won't fit into a SP. It would be the version after VS2010 but I don't know the exact timeline.

 

HabibH.

 

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