Reply To: Debugging from Visual Studio

[Derek Read]

There will be some instances where you cannot “edit and continue” when using the Visual Studio debugger. Microsoft should have those documented somewhere or at least (hopefully) some kind of help on the subject. This feature depends on Microsoft's debug capabilities (for a particular language) and the particular changes you have made. It should be pretty good with VBScript (perhaps one of the most heavily used scripting engines next to JScript).

If this were PerlScript or some other 3rd party engine then I could see that definitely being an issue.

Here's my simple test case (that works for me with VS 2005):

1. Create a new project using the Application Customization project type, with or without the default events the wizard wants to add (we don't need them for this test).
2. Add a new VBScript macro to the project. I've called mine “My Custom Macro”.
3. Add code to the file “My Custom Macro.vbs”. In my case I've kept it simple:
Application.Alert("test string")
4. Debug.
5. XMetaL Author launches.
6. From the list of Macros (either in the Macros toolbar or Macros dialog) select “My Custom Macro” and run it. The text “test string” is displayed in an alert box.
7. Back in Visual Studio change the alert by adding ” changed” to the end of the string then save the file.
8. Returning to XMetaL Author (and in the same debug session) run the macro again. This time the text “test string changed” is displayed in the alert box.

I'm running Windows XP SP3. I think you must be as well (since VS 2005 was not tested or supported on Vista or 7 and neither were XMetaL Developer and XMetaL Author). Don't know if that would make a difference in this particular case.

Note: If you are modifying a script that fires during XMetaL Author startup then it won't run unless you restart the application of course. That's quite a different issue so I assume that is not the case here.

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