Edit and Continue (Visual Basic)

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Edit and Continue is a feature for Visual Basic debugging that enables you to change your code while it is executing in Break mode. After code edits have been applied, you can resume code execution with the new edits in place and see the effect.

You can use the Edit and Continue feature whenever you enter Break mode. In Break mode, the instruction pointer, a yellow arrowhead in the source window, points to the line that will be executed next, and will be located on an executable statement within a method or property body. You can make almost any kind of change to executable statements while in Break mode, and the change will be incorporated into the underlying project. While in Break mode, however, you are generally not allowed to change declaration statements, such as public methods, public fields, or class declarations.

When you make an unauthorized edit, the change is marked with a purple wavy underline and a task is displayed in the Task List. You must undo an unauthorized edit if you want to continue to use Edit and Continue. Certain unauthorized edits may be permitted if done outside Edit and Continue. If you want to retain the results of such an unauthorized edit, you must stop debugging and restart your application.

Edit and Continue does not support changes to LINQ code while you are debugging. See Edit and Continue With LINQ.

Edit and Continue is not supported when you start debugging using Attach to Process. Edit and Continue is not supported for optimized code, mixed managed and native code, debugging, SQL, Compact Framework (Smart Device) projects, debugging on Windows 98, or 64-bit debugging.

If you are debugging a 64-bit application and want to use Edit and Continue, you must change the target platform and compile the application as a 32-bit application. You can change this setting by opening the Project Properties and going to the Compile page. On that page, click Advanced Compile Options and change the Target CPU setting to x86 in the Advanced Compiler Settings dialog box.

The topics in this section provide additional details about how to use this feature and what kinds of changes are not allowed.

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