When VIsual studio goes into debug mode, there is a different window layout that kicks in, watch window, solution explorer, locals and all other windows have different positioning when visual studio goes into debug mode, that can be annoying and distracting as all my windows are already in a good location. Keeping the windows in the same location for both debug and coding should be good enough. It seems to be a feature that doesn't help much and distracts me. At least turning it off would be nice and probably faster to start the debug session as it would avoid all the winodw and pane moving.

It would be nice to have a sort of "one-shot" warning based on possibile typing mistake. An example can clarify this point:
I write this simple code:
for (int i=0; i < myVector1.size(); i++){
for (int k=0; k < myVector2.size(); i++){
....

Due to common copy and paste while programming, it happens that some times some mistakes are done, like above, where in the second for loop the "i" variable is used instead of "k". For the compiler point of view this is OK but normally for a programmer not.
That's why a "single-shot" warning. If the line of code is warned but accepted by the programmer the warning will never appear in the future (can be annoying...), otherwise it can be very useful.
There's a sort of common typing mistakes during programming and they can be easily analized by the debugger. They are normally a waste of time and the help can be very appreciated.

When debugging, sometimes I will want the execution flow to take a particular branch through if statement. To do this, I usually change the value of a variable or field such that the condition for the if statement resolves to the desired value. Instead it would be nice if I could right-click on the if statement and force it to resolve to 'true' or 'false'. Something similar could be useful for switch statements as well.

I can envision circumstances where such a feature would be necessary in order to test a particular branch without modify the code. For example, branching according to the return value of a method for which the developer has no control over (like Math.Random).

Lets say you have a byte array that may or may not have some kind of structure in the data in it - maybe you are trying to figure out what the structure is if it's in unknown format or you are trying to fix a bug and visualizing the array content would help somehow.

So I would like to be able to set a breakpoint where that variable is, then hover over and/or right click the variable to get an option to view it in a range bounded but unboundable memory view -like view, which could be say, easily scripted to support various formats the byte array might contain even if it was just partial, so you could have the usual hex and text column and in addition some sort of interpreted column. So imagine you had a Memory View that can be range bounded to the byte array length with hex,text and additional column the contents of which are based on the data but can be scripted trivially with couple lines of code to show whatever.

I'd like this in C# and C/C++ debugger.

When debugging applications it is common to have 2 instances of a IDE/Debugger running side by side to compare calls stacks, variables, etc. However when trying this with MSVC and MPI Cluster debugger it appears that MSVC has lost its way, or I'm missing something. When starting the MPI CLuster debugger in a second session, the breakpoints appear in the first session of MSVC !!!. It looks like a singleton has taken control... I found a thread on debugging 2 projects but its not focused on side by side debugging, but rather swithcing between projects. We need way to run 2 instances MSVC w/Cluster Debugger. Please note that we are using Intel Fortran and MS C++ in the project.

What it is, is I’d like Shift-F10 to ‘step out of loop’, so if I’m in a ‘for’ or ‘while’ loop, pressing Shift-F10 will run until the loop has completed.

for(int i=0; i<10; ++i)
{
printf(“%d\n”, i); // Shift-F10 here runs to the 2nd printf statement
}

printf(“Done\n”);

This would fix a common case where I have to move the cursor down manually and press CTRL-F10. For nested loops, I guess it should just pop out one by one, as it were.

An alternative (which might end up being more useful) would be for Shift-F10 to run until the execution point goes beyond the next close curly brace. This might be easier to implement but loops with a single line body where the curly braces have been omitted would behave differently.

In the MS VFP compiler, they had a cool option that allowed me to see every event that would fire, whether there was code attached or not. In C#, to do this, I would have to add a console.writeline() to every event of every object used.... Not very practical.

The way I would do it would be to have a flag in the event handler methods that, when a given flag was set, would output that it is checking for method code, whether or not methods have been added to it.

Ok, so why would I need this?
1) When writing code, sometimes it's nice to know which events fire in which sequence. Does the other control's activate event fire before or after this controls lostFocus? Does mouseup fire before or after mouseclick? There is nothing worse than finding a bug that is due to events firing in a sequence that doesn't make sense to you.
2) Sometimes, I am not sure which event I should use when working with some controls. For example, being able to see the sequence of events that fire when I drop an object on another object could be really helpful sometimes.
3) Just knowing that an event I didn't even know existed (or expected to fire) is firing before an event that I count on could be nice.
4) In some cases, being able to see when an event is NOT firing is also good. For example, if a form closes via a Ctrl-F4 or a click in the upper right hand X, does the active controls lost focus fire? What about its validate? You get the idea.

I would prefer having the option to have the output messages go either to the output window or a file. And to also have it ignore certain events (mouseMove for one.)

Have someone show you how Microsoft's Visual FoxPro worked in this way to get a good idea of an implementation.

Thanks,

me