Visual Studio: Real time method call trace?

Question

Hi guys,

This is what I'm looking for: I'd like to be able to get a real time method call listing when I am debugging my program. So for example, say I run my program via the debugger if I press a button or do anything in my program I'd like for it to spit out, say on a visual studio plugin, in real time, all the methods it went through when I pressed this button or did some kind of user action with my program.

I actually once wrote a visual studio plugin that does that by using the visual studio profiler api (I had to write a c++ com server dll that receives this information and pipes it back into my c# plugin). I did this a few years back and I have no idea where I put it. But I'm wondering if Microsoft did something like this in visual studio 2010 or if you know of any third party plugins like this because it is a very handy debugging utility.

Thanks

Answer 1

Check out Visual Studio 2010's Intellitrace feature - it might get you what you need: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264915.aspx

Answer 2

You should check IntelliTrace debugging in Visual Studio 2010. It works only with x86 though

Answer 3

It's not free, it's not even cheap, but RedGate's ANTS Performance Profiler can provide that data and more.

Answer 4

I think you could achieve that using AOP, e.g. PostSharp and an implementation of it's OnMethodBoundaryAspect and a MultiCastAttribute to apply your aspect to every method of your program. They even have an example for something quite similar to what you want on their site.