Why The application is in break mode?

Question

I swear I used to remember Visual Studio just breaking on an exception. It would take you straight to the line where the exception was thrown and allowed you to inspect variables just by hovering over them.

Or maybe that was a dream. Or maybe this is a nightmare.

But it's actually not a problem, right, because now instead of it just working all you need to do is go to Debug > Windows > Exception Settings where you get this mess.

Which has many glaring problems. For example:

• Remember when I said it used to just work?
• I don't have all these Exception types memorized.
• Clicking toggle all on/off removes your previous selections.

Oh and also, clicking this checkbox does absolutely nothing

It used to just work. Is it possible to get it back to just doing that?

Solution 1

Okay. After days of struggling with the break mode, I finally found a solution. Under exception settings, Go to Common Language Runtime Exceptions->check all. This will not break your application, but show you the exact line of occurrence of the exception.

Solution 2

Per that first image you posted, it appears the application is throwing an exception in "external" code, so you likely have the "Just My Code" enabled in the debugging options. Try unchecking that "Just My Code" option via your Tools|Options dialog (Debugging\General category), and that'll likely fix you up.

Sincerely,

Comments

[Dbl]

If you're experiencing issues while debugging it's most likely related in some way to xamarin. Xamarin/mono changed to Mainteance+development by microsoft. That means a lot of hacky/workaround code is thrown out, which occasionally breaks stuff until everything works the way it should work. I've got the same issue - It's a rocky road. I can however recommend you to sign up for appcenter analytics - it's free and it will capture those exceptions for you to inspect easily. If you're developing a mobile application you want analytics at some point anyway.

[user875234]

Is that why the code is buggy? Because even Microsoft can write bad code. But why do they keep making ancillary products (like the live player) when the debugger doesn't even work. To me, as a user of Xamarin, it feels like they are ignoring Xamarin's bugs and just creating new things. Well, those bugs need attention and every new feature that comes out all I can think about is why that development time wasn't spent fixing bugs. About Analytics though, that could be useful once it's deployed.

[Dbl]

I'll try to explain it here: chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/179637/…

[Dbl]

i am not affiliated with MS in any way btw. Just trying to share some insight here

[user875234]

You're right in that "Just My Code" was checked. I notice that it actually still works in an ASP.NET app and a console app. Where it doesn't work, and gives the error shown in the first image I posted (even with "Just My Code" checked or unchecked), is in a Xamarin project. I guess it's a Xamarin issue.