topic Re: Requesting help starting with Visual Studio debugging in ArcObjects SDK Questions

Requesting help starting with Visual Studio debugging

TimBarker — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:17:01 GMT

Hi,

At the risk of posting the dumb-a$$ question of the week, here goes:

I am very new to VB.Net , Visual Studio, and ArcObjects. I have inherited a very large extension that I need to do some simple changes within.

This is a VB.net solution (VS 2010) with about a dozen projects in it. At the end of the day, it places a simple toolbar with some buttons inside my desktop basic v10.1. When pressed, the buttons do some some spatial calculations and processing of output in MS Access files.

Here's my question: How do I launch specific portions within the debugger? I am not understanding the object oriented thing. In my past experiences with procedural languages, one would fire up 'the program' in the debugger and start at the top and follow through line by line. Here, 'the program' is ARCGIS with some new classes waiting to be invoked. How does it work with object classes like ONCLICK() events ?? There is no logical line-by-line progression in 'the program' that gets one to the onclick() event. Trying to start the debugger in such places fails miserably as none of the required preceding environments and variables have had their values set.

If some patient soul is kind enough to point this beginner on the path to understanding, I greatly appreciate it,

Tim

Re: Requesting help starting with Visual Studio debugging

RichardWatson — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:34:33 GMT

The easiest way to approach this is to select one of your projects via "Set as Startup Project" on the project context menu. Next, modify the project properties on the Debug tab, select "Start external program", and specific ArcMap.exe (find it based on where you installed the product) as the program. Set your breakpoints and then hit Run.

Re: Requesting help starting with Visual Studio debugging

TimBarker — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:12:41 GMT

rlWatson,

Thanks! That worked and my changes have been tested.

Sometimes the simple things are far more time consuming than the 'real' work.

Tim