How to edit and continue in Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition and ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I've enabled Enable Edit and Continue on the Web Properties page and it's also enabled in my configuration, yet Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition refuses to allow me to edit source files of an ASP.NET MVC project. I can edit the aspx file with no problem though.

Any ideas what's wrong or what's missing?

Answer 1

If you are targeting x64 or Any CPU on a 64 bit machine you cannot use edit and continue. It only works when you are targeting x32.

I set my Platform target to x32 for the Debug configuration for this reason.

Answer 2

My conclusion is that it just doesn't work.

Answer 3

Remember after ticking "Enable Edit and Continue" in your project properties to Save your changes before building and testing your app. I made this mistake which cost me more time than I care to share!

Answer 4

It works fine at last in Visual Studio 2010 (MVC 4), below are all required steps to do it.

I can change e.g. action code in controller (when application is "paused" or stopped at break point) and all changes are automatically used after "Continue" or in step by step debugging.

Tools > Options > Debuging > Edit and Continue

Tools > Options > Debuging > General

Build > Configuration Manager...

In Solution Explorer right click on main (web) project name > Properties

Change build output path to \bin

Source: Changes are not allowed if the assembly has not been loaded