Breakpoint window improvements
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Navigating large amounts of source code is a burdensome task that I have been trying to make easier for myself for years. Visual Studio has lots of facilities but none of them work well. Bookmarks are great but they are not persistent (I know there are add-ons to do that) and you can't get a list of them. (What happened to VS6 named bookmarks?) The new Navigate Forward/Backward and the Task List facilities sound really useful. In practive they are confusing and clumsy. :( What I mainly use now is breakpoints as a type of bookmark. Often a bit of code where you want to place a bookmark is also where you want to set a breakpoint anyway. VS.Net has greatly improved the support for breakpoints. :) There is now a breakpoints window and you can jump to one just by double clicking it. When you have finished with it as a breakpoint you can disable it to just use it as a bookmark using the checkbox next to it in the breakpoint window. It is also possible to set a large number of related breakpoint/bookmarks using the Function tab in the "New Breakpoint" dialog. Eg, if you type in the name of function like OnInitDialog you get a list of all occurences of that function in the project and you can select any or all of them to have a breakpoint. What I really like is that you can easily set breakpoints on all member functions of a class by typing the class name in the function name field (in New Breakpoint dialog). You can then set breakpoints on any/all member functions. Though an improvement would be to be able to see const/non-const members - I often want to set breakpoints on all non-const mebers so I can find out where an object is being modified. My only concern is that having a large number of breakpoints seems to slow the IDE down a little, even when disabled. This is just an impression -- I haven't done any tests to confirm this. Anyway the point of this post is that even though I love the new breakpoints window it could be improved. It would be nice to be able to group breakpoints using folders, like you can in ClassView and Solution Explorer windows. It would also be nice to be able to attach a name or description to a breakpoint, for obvious reasons. Andrew. Andrew Phillips aphillips @ expertcomsoft.com
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Navigating large amounts of source code is a burdensome task that I have been trying to make easier for myself for years. Visual Studio has lots of facilities but none of them work well. Bookmarks are great but they are not persistent (I know there are add-ons to do that) and you can't get a list of them. (What happened to VS6 named bookmarks?) The new Navigate Forward/Backward and the Task List facilities sound really useful. In practive they are confusing and clumsy. :( What I mainly use now is breakpoints as a type of bookmark. Often a bit of code where you want to place a bookmark is also where you want to set a breakpoint anyway. VS.Net has greatly improved the support for breakpoints. :) There is now a breakpoints window and you can jump to one just by double clicking it. When you have finished with it as a breakpoint you can disable it to just use it as a bookmark using the checkbox next to it in the breakpoint window. It is also possible to set a large number of related breakpoint/bookmarks using the Function tab in the "New Breakpoint" dialog. Eg, if you type in the name of function like OnInitDialog you get a list of all occurences of that function in the project and you can select any or all of them to have a breakpoint. What I really like is that you can easily set breakpoints on all member functions of a class by typing the class name in the function name field (in New Breakpoint dialog). You can then set breakpoints on any/all member functions. Though an improvement would be to be able to see const/non-const members - I often want to set breakpoints on all non-const mebers so I can find out where an object is being modified. My only concern is that having a large number of breakpoints seems to slow the IDE down a little, even when disabled. This is just an impression -- I haven't done any tests to confirm this. Anyway the point of this post is that even though I love the new breakpoints window it could be improved. It would be nice to be able to group breakpoints using folders, like you can in ClassView and Solution Explorer windows. It would also be nice to be able to attach a name or description to a breakpoint, for obvious reasons. Andrew. Andrew Phillips aphillips @ expertcomsoft.com
Andrew Phillips wrote: Bookmarks are great but they are not persistent Yes they are. But they don't seem to be on .asp pages. Kevin
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Andrew Phillips wrote: Bookmarks are great but they are not persistent Yes they are. But they don't seem to be on .asp pages. Kevin
Actually they are persisted with the open solution, but only only the files you have open when you close the solution. This is not really much use as I open many files and don't want to keep them all open. Andrew. Andrew Phillips aphillips @ expertcomsoft.com
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Actually they are persisted with the open solution, but only only the files you have open when you close the solution. This is not really much use as I open many files and don't want to keep them all open. Andrew. Andrew Phillips aphillips @ expertcomsoft.com
Andrew Phillips wrote: Actually they are persisted with the open solution, but only only the files you have open when you close the solution. Ah, I hadn't noticed that! But with ASP files they don't even do this! Have you tried posting a suggestion directly to Microsoft? Now's the time to do it while the next version is being refined. I think the IDE is very good in general but there are still a number of simple things like this that are surprising by their absence. In VC6 I've used that bookmark saver add-in over the years. Also, I think MS would do well to pinch some ideas from the TextPad editor, which is astonishingly well-implemented and thought out for its size and cost. Kevin