Mike Stall's .NET Debugging Blog

Notes on Managed Debugging, ICorDebug, and random .NET stuff

Unit tests for a simple OnMoved event handler

Sometimes even the simple stuff can have some interesting unit tests and corner cases. I had a class...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 08/10/2007

Updating my sample for the Silverlight Refresh

You may have heard there was a July'07 refresh of silverlight to the original Mix'07 release....

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 08/09/2007

Updating Visual Studio for the Silverlight 1.1 Refresh

You may have heard about the recent Silverlight 1.1 alpha refresh to the original Silverlight alpha...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 08/08/2007

Why is there a separate 'debug pack' for Silverlight?

To debug Silverlight apps, you need to download a separate debug pack on top of VS Orcas and the...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 08/08/2007

Setting transparency in an image

Just as Jackie Chan does his own stunts; I do my own image drawing. Some of my "art": (The yellow...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 08/06/2007

Making "Required properties" less annoying

Be wary of "required" properties that must be explicitly set correctly in order for the object to...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 08/05/2007

My first (non-trivial) Windows Live Writer Plugin

So the Live Writer Plugin model is so cool and easy that I had to write a plugin. (and do it with...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 08/03/2007

68+ "Visual Studio 2008 beta 2 is released" blog entries in 24 hours.

I just counted 68 blog entries on https://blogs.msdn.com posted within the last 24 hours with a title...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 07/27/2007

Safety by Accident

The oxymoron "safety by accident" came up in a conversation. It sounded very natural in context when...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 07/21/2007

A 30x speed improvement

Going from 8 minutes down to 15 seconds. Not bad. What's the secret? Synchronizing the traffic...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 07/11/2007

JScript vs. Nintendo DS

You've probably seen (C# + Silverlight 1.1) clobbering JScript at Chess in the Silverlight Chess...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 07/08/2007

I've had enough "Debugger + Versioning" posts to go back and create a versioning category. The...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 07/05/2007

What can I use to debug VC2002 Managed C++ apps?

Debugging MC++ apps from VC2002 with VS2005 came up in the comments here. In the ideal world,...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 07/04/2007

Which is worse?

I noticed something that was very stupid (for purposes of this post, it doesn't matter what exactly...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 07/03/2007

Optimize for Simplicity

For a compiler, the common things are code size vs. speed. The conventional wisdom is to optimize...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 06/28/2007

Test what you Ship, Debug what you Test

Test what you ship. This should be obvious. Debug what you test. When you test, you'll find...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 06/21/2007

Answer to Number puzzle

Here are answers + commentary to the number puzzle I posted yesterday, which was, fill in the...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 06/13/2007

Number puzzle

Here's a little number puzzle quiz. Fill in the digits: ABC +DEF GHI Where each letter represents a...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 06/12/2007

Out of office

My wife + I recently had daughter #2. I'm taking time off, and so my participation on the forums and...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 06/07/2007

Silverlight and CLR enumeration

Jason Zander posted sample code to enumerate all the CLRs (both regulars like 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 05/31/2007

Techniques for Debugging IL

I mentioned in the recent dev lab that you can debug at the IL level. I demoed two ways to do this,...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 05/27/2007

Debugger talk at Compiler Lab

The CLR team recently had a compiler dev Lab on campus in building 20, with a strong focus on...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 05/25/2007

My first Silverlight 1.1 app

Here's my first Silverlight 1.1 (which has .NET support) app. It bounces various shapes around the...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 05/18/2007

Non-deterministic Searching blogs

I noticed a funny thing when using my blog's search feature. I was trying to find my previous blog...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 05/15/2007

Silverlight 1.1 Alpha

I've been pretty quiet lately. Given all the news from Mix about Silverlight, you all have enough to...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 05/04/2007

Debugger and Versioning

"Which versions of a managed debugger (eg, Visual Studio) can debug which versions of the CLR? And...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 04/20/2007

Sometimes it's better to just not think about it

I was in a bookstore and saw an some inspirational book title: "Shoot for the moon. If you miss,...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 04/18/2007

Myers-Briggs

I'm a huge fan of the Myers-Briggs personality tests. Here's a simple online unofficial version:...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 04/15/2007

Finally, a computer I can beat at chess

The last time I could beat a computer at chess was probably about 15-20 years ago. I've gotten...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 04/03/2007

TypeDef vs. TypeRef

Many of the .NET docs use the phrase "TypeDef or TypeRef". What's the difference? Both refer to...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 03/23/2007

Describing Types in .NET

There are several different APIs for handling Types in .NET. Criteria:For each category I want to...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 03/15/2007

Func-eval abort is evil

Func-eval is evil. Func-eval abort is even worse. For those coming in late, Func-eval is when the...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 03/13/2007

Using Windows live Writer

I'm trying out Windows Live Writer. Currently, I do all of my blogging via Frontpage, so this will...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 03/12/2007

"Why are you picking off the olives?"

Somebody asked me this at lunch. I had gotten a pizza with olives, and was picking off the olives. I...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 03/09/2007

Building and Debugging Powershell cmdlets in the VS IDE

Here's how you can get a sweet Visual Studio development experience for building and debugging your...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 03/04/2007

Some tips for P/invoke

Here are some tips I've learned the hard way after wrapping some nasty things into managed code...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 02/28/2007

Ratio between Managed and Native Modules

There is not always a 1:1 correlation between Managed modules and native modules. For example,...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 02/23/2007

'throw e;' vs. 'throw;'

Someone asked what the practical differences are between 'throw;' (no arguments) and 'throw object;'...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 02/15/2007

Making Catch, Rethrow more debuggable.

I previously mentioned that catch / rethrow an exception impedes debuggability because the callstack...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 02/12/2007

Catch, Rethrow, and Debuggability

When you catch and rethrow an exception, the stack is unwound by the time the catch clause is...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 02/07/2007

Sample code for copying Html to Clipboard

// Sample class for Copying and Pasting HTML fragments to and from the clipboard. // // Mike Stall....

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 01/21/2007

Copying HTML on the clipboard

Setting plain text on the clipboard is easy. Call Clipboad.SetText("Hello!"), and it works great....

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 01/21/2007

Image Header vs. File Timestamps.

Folks may use the term "Module Timestamp" to mean both file timestamp and image header timestamp....

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 01/18/2007

UpdateModuleSysmbols comes on attach

I forgot about UpdateModuleSysmbols when I described the fake debug events sent on attach. This...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 01/18/2007

Tips for writing an Interop Debugger

I've had a growing number of people inquire about how to write an interop-debugger with ICorDebug. I...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 01/15/2007

#ifdef usage in Rotor

I ran my #ifdef counter on the Rotor sources. The #ifdefs fall into a few categories:...

Author: Mike Stall - MSFT Date: 01/12/2007

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