Unable To Step Into .NET Source

PeterRitchie — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:59:00 GMT

I began getting a problem a while ago that I was unable to step into the .NET source in Visual Studio 2008. It happened suddenly, and I noticed it shortly after installing SP1. Given my observation it appears to be due to upgrading the SP1; but I couldn’t find anyone else not having the same problem. I had another computer where it worked, so I basically put it aside.

Today I had a chance to have a closer look. I had configured 2008 (RTM, not SP1) to get the .NET source based on Shawn Burke’s blog and had not encountered any problems. Once I upgraded to SP1 and checked “enabled .Net source stepping”, I all I ever got when trying to step through source is a dialog asking me for the location of the CS file.

What I had configured was to place the debug symbols into a folder in the Visual Studio 2008 user directory (c:\Documents and Settings\PRitchie\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Symbols, for example).

Despite creating a new subdirectory for SP1, I still could not step through the source.

It wasn’t until I moved the directory down the hierarchy that I finally got some joy. I first tried it on the root and it worked fine. I then tried it as a sub directory within my documents and it worked fine. I imagine that the path was longer that 260 and rather than present the user with an error with that detail it assumed it couldn’t find the file it was looking for and asked the user for the location of it. But, I’m guessing.

Hope this helps someone else.

Trials and Tribulations of DataGridView, Column Selections, and Sorting

PeterRitchie — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:06:00 GMT

I had to implement some custom sorting in a DataGridView recently. Essentially, the stakeholders wanted full column selection (like Excel) while still having the ability to sort the data based on a particular column.

This particular DataGridView is data-bound. DataGridView offers the Sort(DataGridViewColumn, ListSortDirection) method to perform this. Nice and easy I thought: I’ll set the SelectionMode to DataGridViewSelectionMode.ColumnHeaderSelect and simply call Sort with the selected column.

Well, much to my chagrin this had the side effect of making that column look selected all the time. No matter where else I clicked, that recently sorted column looked selected (SelectedColumns had a count of zero). And to add insult to injury, when I control-clicked that column (thinking it was selected) to unselected it, it caused a NullReferenceException deep in the framework.

Suffice it to say, this makes it very difficult to sort by columns in DataGridView without using the built-in sort-column-when-header-is-clicked mode.

What I’m now attempting to do is to unselect the column before sorting it. This, in itself, is not trivial either; there’s no public method to select or deselect a column in the DataGridView. I’ve had to create a new DataGridView derivative and call the protected method SetSelectedColumnCore. A few hoops…

I’ve logged a couple of issues on Microsoft Connect about these problems. The first is about ctrl-clicking the column and getting an exception: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=363623 The second is about the visual state of the column remaining “selected”: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=363623 Attached to this post you will find the project referenced by the two Connect issues.

[Update: I've currently only tried this with a .NET 2.0 project in Visual Studio 2008 SP1; if you find this problem occurs in Visual 2008 RTM, please comment.]

[Update: I overlooked the DataGridViewColumn.Select property, so there's no need to derive from DataGridView]

Peter Ritchie's MVP Blog : Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Unable To Step Into .NET Source

Trials and Tribulations of DataGridView, Column Selections, and Sorting