How to tell if you are running in the debugger in VS?

Question

Hi,

Is there a way to tell in the code if you are running in the debugger in VS2008? I need to set up a couple things for us developers differently than when the user is running the click one deployed app? I see that there are things you can do to tell if you are in Designer mode but that is not the same.

thanks! Bill

Answer 1

I tend to separate out debug-only code using #debug:

#if DEBUG
    RunMeInDebugModeOnly();
#else
    RunMeInReleaseModeOnly();
#end if

The #else isn't necessary and is only required if you don't want something to run in Debug mode.

#if DEBUG
    RunMeInDebugModeOnly();
#end if

And finally if you only want code to execute in Release mode:

#if !DEBUG
    RunMeInReleaseModeOnly();
#end if

The code within the if #DEBUG clause doesn't get executed when you run in Visual Studio in Release mode, but you don't get the full functionality of the debugger then anyway ;-)

Answer 2

If you just want to create different code for Debug dlls use the DEBUG define #if DEBUG

If you want to know at runtime if your code is currently beeing debugged you can hook in using Visual Studio's DebuggerVisualiazers

Answer 3

You can get the name of the current EXE and if it has "vshost" in it, you are in the debugger.

Answer 4

Exact copy of my answer in the related question:

if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached) { 
    // You are debugging 
}