How to debug winforms designer

Question

My question is not how to debug during design time. I actually want to debug through the events available in designer. I know that the form has load and other type of events. Is there any events in windows forms designer like init, load, etc ?

I have done a similar debugging in ASP through user controls. It allows us to view the output HTML of a user control before adding it to the designer.

I know windows forms and ASP are different but there should be some event to check values of Controls before actually rendering it.

My Form takes a long time to open in the VS designer. So I attached a debugger to VisualStudio (devenv.exe), set a breakpoint in my Form’s InitializeComponent to step through it to see what the problem is. However, the breakpoint is not getting hit.

Answer 1

To debug design-time of your windows forms project:

• Right click on your project in solution explorer and open Properties.
• In the property page select the Debug tab.
• In the Start Action section, select Start external programand then click on button to browse for the Visual Studio executable file devenv.exe which is located in a path like "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe"
• Save project and then run using F5. A new instance of visual studio will be opened.
• Open the project using new instance. Which enables you to debug the previous instance of visual studio containing your project.
• Put breakpoints in the files which you want to debug in instance.

When may I find this approach useful?

• When you have an exception in design-time.
• When you want to debug the behavior of a Designer or a TypeConverter or a UiTypeEditor at design time.

For more information:

• Walkthrough: Debugging Custom Windows Forms Controls at Design Time

Answer 2

To debug in designer you need to put a breakpoint on top of designer code.

Then start your application and it will stop at the breakpoint.

Press F11 to move one line at the time.