1 out of 5 rated this helpful - Rate this topic

/Log (devenv.exe)

Logs all activity to the log file for troubleshooting. The log file is:

%APPDATA%\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<version>\ActivityLog.xml.

where <version> is the Visual Studio version.

Devenv /log

This switch must appear at the end of the command line, after all other switches.

Did you find this helpful?
(1500 characters remaining)
Community Content Add
Annotations FAQ
Limit logging
Is there a way to limit what gets logged?  I really don't need to see "Entering function VBDispatch::GetTypeLib", "Leaving function VBDispatch::GetTypeLib" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and.... Get my point?
More information

The activity log is useful for diagnosing problems with the integrated development environment (IDE). In particular, when the IDE attempts to load a package, information is written to the activity log.

Arguments
LogFile (Visual Studio 2005 and above)
Optional. If specified, and the file does not already exist, the file will be created. If the file cannot be created (e.g. due to insufficient write access), the log will be written to the non-localized APPDATA location instead (See below)

If LogFile is not specified, two files will be written to the current user's non-localized application data folder. The non-localized application data folder for Visual Studio can be found from the APPDATA environment variable. For example, for Visual Studio 2010, the folder is %APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0, where %APPDATA% represents the value in the APPDATA environment variable.
The two files are, by default, called ActivityLog.xml and ActivityLog.xsl. The former contains the activity log data and the latter is an XML style sheet which provides a more convenient way to view the XML file. To view the Activity log in your default XML viewer (e.g. Internet Explorer)

  1. Click Start 
  2. Click "Run..." 
  3. Type %APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\ActivityLog.xml 
  4. Press Enter 

For some additional explanation, please see http://blogs.msdn.com/visualstudio/archive/2010/02/24/troubleshooting-with-the-activity-log.aspx

/Log does not have to appear after other switches
The comment in the "Remarks" section is wrong. "/log" may appear anywhere on the command line as long as its optional Logfile argument could not confused with a raw file or solution name that should be loaded in the IDE.
Advertisement