Visual Studio .NET provides a single integrated debugger for all Visual Studio languages, including Visual Basic and C#. A new, unified interface combines features of the Visual C++ and Visual Basic 6.0 debuggers, as well as many new features.
What's New in Visual Basic .NET 2002
Visual Basic .NET 2003 includes the following features, which were introduced in Visual Basic .NET 2002.
- Cross-Language Debugging
- Using the integrated debugger, you can debug projects that are part of the same solution but are written in different languages. For example, you can debug a solution that contains a project consisting of a Visual Basic or Visual C# user interface application and a Visual C++ server application, and you can step back and forth between these projects, for example from Managed Extensions for C++ to Visual Basic and back to Managed Extensions for C++. For more information, see Mixed-Mode Debugging.
- Attaching to a Running Program
- You can attach the debugger to a program that is already running and debug the program. Attaching to a running program works the same way whether the program is running on a host machine or a remote machine. The program does not need to be launched in the Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment (IDE). For more information, see Attaching to a Running Program or Multiple Programs.
- Remote Debugging
- You can attach to and debug a process that is running on a different computer from the one on which you are running Visual Studio. For example, if you are debugging a Windows Forms client application and an XML Web service it uses, you can run Visual Studio on the client and then attach to the server that is providing the XML Web service. You typically perform this kind of debugging for Web Forms projects or ASP.NET Web Service projects. For more information, see Attaching to a Running Program or Multiple Programs.
- Debugging Multithreaded Applications
- New for Visual Basic users is the ability to write and debug multithreaded applications. The Threads window can be used to view the threads that are running and to switch context. For more information, see Using the Threads Window.
- Debugging Multiple Programs
- You can debug multiple programs by attaching to running programs or by launching multiple programs from the Visual Studio IDE. For more information, see Debugging Multiple Programs.
- Debugging ASP.NET Web Applications
- Configuring debugging for ASP.NET Web applications has been significantly improved. In most cases you can simply choose Start from the Debug menu and the debugger will automatically attach to the ASP.NET worker process for debugging Web Forms, even if the ASP.NET worker process is running on a different server. Security configuration has been made easier by the addition of a debugger users group. For more information, see Debugging Script and Web Applications.
- .NET Framework Classes for Debugging and Code Tracing
- You can include instrumentation code in your Microsoft .NET application. Several .NET Framework classes are available for use both in debugging and in instrumenting your code. For more information, see Tracing and Instrumenting Applications in Visual Basic and Visual C#, Debug class, and Trace class, and scan the table of contents in the System.Diagnostics Namespace in the .NET Framework documentation.
- Replacements for Visual Basic's Debug.Print
- In Visual Basic .NET the Debug.Print method has been replaced by four new methods: Debug.Write method, Debug.WriteIf method, Debug.WriteLine method, and Debug.WriteLineIf method. The method most resembling Debug.Print is Debug.Write. To use these or any other methods of the Debug class, Visual Basic and Visual C# users should remember to include at the appropriate place in their code the statement
Imports System.Diagnostics or Using System.Diagnostics, respectively. For more information, see Programming Element Support Changes Summary.
See Also
What's New in Visual Studio .NET | Debugging Managed Code | What's New in Visual Basic and Visual C#