How to test the retail version of your app for Windows Phone 8

[ This article is for Windows Phone 8 developers. If you’re developing for Windows 10, see the latest documentation. ]

Before you release your app in the Windows Phone Store, we recommend that you test its performance on a device as users will experience it.

When you build your app in Visual Studio, the code is not compiled into a native image, but into a machine-independent Common Intermediate Language (CIL) binary file. (CIL was formerly known as Microsoft Intermediate Language, or MSIL.) This CIL file is what you submit to the Store when you’re ready to sell your app. At that time, the binary file is converted from CIL to optimized Machine Dependent Intermediate Language, or MDIL. Finally, when the user downloads your app to a device, the MDIL file is linked to produce a native image. These steps are repeated in your development environment whenever you deploy your app to a Windows Phone 8 device.

The functionality of your app is not affected by the conversion to native code. However, the native image typically starts and runs faster.

This topic contains the following sections.

Testing your app as an optimized native image

When you deploy and run your app without debugging, you’re testing it as an optimized native image.

To test your app as an optimized native image

  1. In Visual Studio, on the Standard toolbar, select Device as the deployment target. You cannot test native code generation on Windows Phone Emulator.

  2. Deploy and run your app on the device by using Ctrl+F5 (Start without debugging) or Alt+F1 (Start Windows Phone Performance Analysis) to test the app as an optimized native image.

  3. Test the app’s performance and responsiveness.

Debugging your app as an optimized native image

If you want to deploy and debug your app on the device by using F5 (Start with debugging), you have to take the following additional steps.

To debug your app as an optimized native image

  1. On the Tools menu, select Options to open the Options dialog box.

  2. In the navigation pane of the Options dialog box, select Debugging. In the list of debugging options, make the following changes:

    1. Clear the Suppress JIT optimization on module load option.

    2. Clear the Enable Just My Code option.

    Click OK to close the Options dialog box.

  3. Deploy and debug your app.

See Also

Other Resources

JIT Optimization and Debugging