Why does one website project debug but not the other? (Both projects build.) Visual Studio 2008

Question

I have inherited two VB.Net web projects, on one ("goodproj"), the debugger works, allowing me to step through the code. On the other ("badproj"), it doesn't.

On badproj, when I hit F5 or the green arrow to debug, the website builds without error, fires up the development web server and launches the browser showing the website. BUT... no debugger! (And no error message.) The output window for Debug is totally blank.

Any help or a pointer to a good article on how debugging works with VS will be greatly appreciated. Any particular settings I should be looking at?

Answer 1

Have you checked your web.config files, and your configuration settings to make sure that project is set to Debug?

Also, if that project is referencing any other DLL's that are out of date, you might not be able to debug those files which could be causing this.

Answer 2

Problem solved: There was an offending tag in the web.config file of badproj. A location tag <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">...</location> was wrapped around several tags, including the <compilation debug="true"> tag.

Removing this offending location tag solved the problem. The debugger sprang to life in all of its debuggy glory.