putting a debugging console window in your app

Question

I'm starting to develop a simple application in VS9 and I decided to use WPF and the MVVM paradigm for it.

Still being a bit unexperienced with VS deveopment in general and WPF-controls in peculiar, I would like to ask how I should proceed to establish a little debug console window that takes perhaps 1/4 of the main window and sits kind of docked in the bottom of the window.

I would use it for writing trace or debug messages into it while my application runs or while I'm debugging it in the development phase.

Anyway, what type of control should I use and how do I write to it?

Alternatively I was thinking of using a Console window separately from my WPF application but that wouldn't be so desirable, actually.

-- Chris

Answer 1

Instead of a debugging window, use this opportunity to get yourself familiar with log4net, and write to a file. log4net is brilliant (generally) and a very widely-used logging system.

Answer 2

A very basic method is to use System.Diagnostics.Trace for writing out debug messages. You can attach to these messages with a TraceListener as described here, or you can use a separate tool such as DebugView to display these messages. Please note that while debugging, trace messages will also be displayed in Visual Studio's Output window.

Answer 3

Rather than write logging messages to a window:

• You would be better off writing messages using a proper logging framework (such as log4net)
• Alternatively you could use Trace statements if you want to avoid using complex logging frameworks for a simple application.

If you do want to write messages to a window or console in your application, then the recommendation would be to use a separate window - that way the presence of the console / debug window doesn't affect the layout of your main window.

As for getting a debug console to "stick" to the bottom of your window, take a look at some articles (or perhaps a book) on layout in wpf, and get used to how the layout system works in wpf.

http://learnwpf.com/Posts/Post.aspx?postId=c76411d6-5350-4a10-b6bb-f1481c167ecf
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/BeginWPF1.aspx
http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/Windows-Scripting/WPF-Control-Layout/

You should probably be able to get the desired effect using a Dock Panel