If you follow our blog, you might remember my mentioning a forthcoming enhancement to the Visual Studio debugger. We demonstrated that feature—the VA Step Filter—at the Build conference in April to rave reviews, and we are happy to announce that the feature is included in a new general release of Visual Assist.
If you use the native C/C++ debugger, you are undoubtedly familiar with—or frustrated by—the need to step into and out of methods in a parameter list before you can step into a method you need to debug. With the VA Step Filter, you can now step over those pesky methods, and step directly into the body of a method of interest.
The VA Step Filter includes built-in filters to step over commonly invoked methods that don’t need to be debugged, and lets you define filters for your methods you are confident are not culprits of any bug. In the following example, the VA Step Filter lets me step into MethodStdString without stepping into the standard string class, and without stepping into my method GetLoopCount.
In addition to the VA Step Filter, Visual Assist build 2042 includes support for files and symbols that are part of Nuget packages, a little more control of our refactoring commands, and several bug fixes. Visual Assist build 2042 requires software maintenance through 2014.06.25.
Although build 2042 is a general release, the VA Step Filter is designated beta. We welcome your feedback in this blog, in our discussion forums, and at support@wholetomato.com.
Learn more about the VA Step Filter, check out the complete list of what’s new, or download the installer.