Debugging print preferences application

Question

I'm writing DCA(device companion application) for v4 printer driver using XAML and C#. When application stops at breakpoint, I can't evaluate values of local variables and  if I press F5 to continue execution it stops and fly-out window is disappeared. It seems that this behavior is caused by fly-out nature of print preferences dialog.  Can you suggest a solution for this problem? Is there any way to debug DCA applications?

Answer 1

You can use remote debugging to evaluate the values in the flyout.  You can find a publicly available remote debugger for VS11 here. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27540 
Deploy that on your remote machine and set the target of your deployment as the remote machine in VS11 under the Debug-><project> Properties dialog.

Answer 2

You could also use the simulator

Answer 3

Thank you for the response, but is this only solution? I think it isn't convinient way to debug such applications.

Answer 4

It is very slowly, especially when working on virtual mashines. 

Answer 5

Well, the flyout has to disappear or else it would sit on top of visual studio when you are debugging.  So it seems the only options are to have two machines or use the simulator. 

Since you are using a virtual machine, you can try using another virtual machine as the remote debugging target. 

Answer 6

I try to use simulator, two machines but debugging is not fully possible. When I try to debug remotely window disappear.