Debug Assistant

Debug Assistant traces unmanaged code only! If you have .NET code, these modules will be ignored. Simply put, current version is for Visual C++ only. Other modules can be part of the execution, but only C++ code are traced. Also version 3.5 traces 32bit target only, 64bit modules will be ignored. .NET and 64bit support will be available in future version, but no date is set yet. ANY purchase of Debug Assistant will get free .NET and 64bit upgrade.

Debug Assistant is a debug  tool created as a Visual Studio package which will help you trace your project's problems. It is integrated with Visual Studio IDE just like any other Visual Studio components. Debug Assistant is not a debugger itself. It helps debug process by tracing/recording program execution flow. It traces every line of your code within user selected scope.

Before trace starts, user selects trace scope within your code. User can include/exclude any levels of code: projects, directories, files, and functions. Once scope is set up, user also needs to tell the startup program. User can click Start Process button to start the program.

Debug Assistant loads up debug information of all traced modules and instruments these modules in the process memory. Your program is running just like normal, but it is under monitoring of Debug Assistant. You can click Turn On Trace button to start recording, Turn Off Trace button to pause recording. Click Show Trace Result, you get a graphical presentation of the execution you just recorded.

When you are fixing a bug or just coding, you have no idea where to start from in your code. You may know where to look at, the scope is too big, there is too much going on from A to B. You are analyzing your program, and you just want to see really what is going on in your code when you run certain part of your program. You may save trace results as files and re-examine it later. You are testing your program or you are finding performance issues.

Debug Assistant can only trace a short portion of program execution which is just good enough for you to find problems. It can not trace a long term of execution. The only reason for that is you will run out of resources (memory for example) if you do that. Because of that, currently Debug Assistant has set a hard-coded limit of how many execution points (each line of code is an execution point). That limit is 2 million. It may sound like a big number, but practically it is not that big in general. However, this is not an issue for the purpose listed above.