Why can't I inspect local variables with IntelliTrace for VS 2010?

Question

When navigating to previous calls/events during debugging with IntelliTrace, I can't see a snapshot of the value of locally-defined variables. When hovering with the mouse I get the message "Intellitrace data has not been collected". Does anyone know why?

Answer 1

The Intellitrace team covered this a bit in one of their blog entries. Here is the link (it's in the comment section)

• http://blogs.msdn.com/ianhu/archive/2009/11/16/intellitrace-itrace-files.aspx

The short version though is that collecting all local variables was too much of a performance hit. Instead they only selectively capture locals. That is they will collect locals which

• Are evaluated in the debugger during the debugging session
• Values which have trace points defined against them
• Local variables which are specifically configured to be captured (didn't go into detail on how to do that other than setting up a trace point).

Answer 2

Note that a later blog post from the same blogger - http://blogs.msdn.com/ianhu/archive/2010/03/16/intellitrace-what-we-collect.aspx - expanded quite on the limitations and how you can get around them somewhat.