I am attempting to perform a stackwalk with Xperf, using a batch file similar to the one listed at Getting the symbols with xperf.
I launch XperfView, confirm the symbol path is correct, and then load the symbols. However, when I attempt to open a summary table on a selected portion (5 seconds or so) of the "CPU Sampling by CPU" graph, the Performance Analyzer hangs (not responding) for a long time (hours).
I left it running last night, and when I came in this morning the Summary Table had finally loaded, containing results as expected... I had thought perhaps it was just performing an initial download to cache the symbols to C:\symbols, but a repeat test this morning has similar problems (hang for 1 hr 15 minutes at this point).
WPT (xperf, xperfview, WPA) doesn't ship with dbghelp.dll and symsrv.dll. That means that, depending on what is in your path you may get:
Fast symbol loading
Symbol loading that takes up to 150x longer
No symbol loading at all.
The solution is to copy a known-good version of these DLLs into the WPT install directory. For more details see this post:
http://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/xperf-symbol-loading-pitfalls/
In his post , Bruce Dawson speculates that there is an issue with dbghelp.dll and/or symsrv.dll in WPT as shipped in the current SDK. He suggesting replacing those with the ones either from Visual Studio 2010, or from Debugging Tools for Windows (i.e. WinDbg). Worked for me...
Have you set up symcache something like this
SRV*c:\dev\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
The symcache would cache the symbols locally. I usually have my _NT_SYMBOL_PATH environment variable with the above information.
HTH
Related
I’m using VB 2019 with the latest updates on 64-bit Windows 10 with the same. In the past few days I’ve started having a 30-40 second delay when loading my code in debug mode. Up until a couple of days ago this only took about 5 seconds. Any ideas what might have happened and/or how I can reduce this delay starting up my code every time I make a change to it?
Windows updated a couple of items each of the last couple of nights, I wonder if any of these have triggered the new behavior.
The reason may be that many files are created during compilation, and the anti-virus tool provided by Microsoft will scan the created files, so the compilation speed is reduced.
You can set a folder whitelist in the Windows Security Center, which is Windows Defender. Files in this folder will not be scanned. Putting my own code warehouse, I will put all my code in a folder, add this folder to the whitelist, it will not be scanned during compilation, which can speed up the compilation speed.
I have a solution written in VB with some C# components. The solution uses some libraries from 2 outside sources. I have been working on this project for several months without issue. I cannot identify anything specific that I did to change my system or configuration. I was just working through the code, transitioning from an old set of library calls to the new library calls. The new library calls require complete rewrite so I change sections of the code and test to that point. Visual Studio 2013 debugger as of Friday morning will no longer recognize or show my local variables in this solution. The only things that appear in the Locals window are under Me. The code does work and I have it writing out to a text log file to confirm the values of variables at certain points, but the debugger has gone blind. When I add any of these local variables to Watch the response is " is not declared. It may be inaccessible due to its protection level."
Steps I've taken so far with no permanent success:
looked online and tried the few matches I found with no success
deleted the bin and obj folders and had the solution rebuild with no
success
recreated solution from scratch, copied over base files and rebuilt
solution and project (which worked for a few hours), until I did a
rebuild project and problem appeared again
updated to pack 5 and no success
I have opened my older projects and checked them. The debugger runs just fine and shows the variables. It is obviously something that happens during the rebuild process.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Update:
Let me try to explain a little more clearly the situation.
I have an application I have built and am selling to some customers. Version 1 is installed and running at several locations. It is written in VB and uses some older COM libraries for a particular integration process.
The vendor is retiring the COM libraries. Their new libraries are in C#.
I created a new copy of my entire application (solution) and imported the new C# libraries. I have been going through and replacing the old code with the code for the new calls.I recompiled the solution and everything ran fine in debug.
The objects used with the new calls are completely different and there is limited documentation so I update a section of code and test to that point. Each time I "Save all Files", rebuild the project and test the changes. Everything worked fine for a few days. On Friday morning I started working on more changes and got an odd error. The system was not getting a proper value for a certain variable. When I went to check it in the WATCH window, debugger said it could not evaluate it. I figured something was hung up so I shut everything down and rebooted my machine. When I tried it again later, the same problem.
After several hours of no success I exited VS, renamed the folder to "OLD" and recreated the solution from the older version. Immediately everything was looking fine. I started making the changes and testing. Each time I did a rebuild, everything looked fine until the last change. Here I am again.
The code works fine up to the point I have updated. The only issue is that the debugger windows are not working correctly. If a variable is declared at the Class level outside the Sub, they can be seen. The only variables the debugger is blind to are the local variables within the running Sub.
I looked for anyone else with this issue and only found a few items. I tried the suggestions but no joy. I am left with having to temporarily define the variables outside the sub so I can see them while debugging.
I am on VS 2013 Update 5.
Do I need to move to VS 2015 to get around this?
Thanks again for your time and assistance.
I am assuming that you haven't changed versions of visual studio since the last time a rebuild worked for you.
recreated solution from scratch, copied over base files and rebuilt solution and project (which worked for a few hours), until I did a rebuild project and problem appeared again
Based on this, you create it from scratch and everything works until you do the rebuild right? But you are copying the base files still and you have new library calls since the last time a rebuild didn't mess up the locals window. So one of those is almost assuredly the culprit.
Since the library calls seem to be the thing that changed based on your post start there. If you go back to the old code and do a rebuild does it fix it? Assuming so, put the library calls back one at a time until it breaks.
If going back to the old code doesn't fix it, create from scratch with the old code and copy over the base files and rebuild. If that fixes it, add new library calls one at a time and rebuild after each until it breaks.
If that doesn't fix it either, then you will need to dig deeper on what else might have changed.
You are copying base files so eliminate those as the problem if you can:
Are you able to use placeholders instead of the base files or something that won't necessarily work as a finished product but that will allow you to debug, rebuild, debug again to see if the problem is related to one of them? Check the dates on the base files and ensure that they haven't changed since the last time a rebuild worked.
Something you could do concurrently could be to have have a colleague do a rebuild on their machine and see if the same issue comes up for them. It would (almost) completely eliminate the possibility that it is a configuration / program corruption issue on yours. Alternately, there are some free vb.net compilers online that you can upload files and code to. I'm not sure if that would be practical for you (due to the components of your program and/or sensitivity of the data) or not and haven't ever tried any where there is C# code in there but I wouldn't think that would be an issue.
I'm having an issue which I'd have thought others might have come accross, but I can't find any posts.
My (small) WiX projects are taking ages (2-4mins each) to build on our build server, but are much quicker on my desktop (a few seconds).
After some poking around I've narrowed it down to McAfee scanning the temporary files created by light (located in the TEMP user environment variable). I don't know why it's taking so long to scan - disabling the AV has got the build time to well under 2 mins, previously it was over 20!
Now my issue is how to exclude these temp files from the AV. I don't want to exclude the TEMP folder for obvious reasons and there doesn't appear to be a way of excluding by file name without creating a big hole in the AV.
So I guess my question is, is there a way of configuring light.exe to use a different path other than TEMP? I tried some command line switches with no luck. Maybe I could add something to the Light.exe.config?
Cheers.
Can you not just disable real time antivirus scanning on your build machines? My argument for doing this would be that your VM should be full scanned and then disabled and that all files making it's way into the build machine are coming from source control and / or file shares that should have already been scanned at various points upstream in the process.
We ran over 100,000 builds a year at my last job and A/V would have killed us.
Otherwise, if you type light.exe -? you'll see there is an environment variable called WIX_TEMP that overrides the temp directory.
I'm seeing a strange build bug a lot. Sometimes after typing some code we receive the following build error.
Class 'clsX' must implement 'Event PropertyChanged(sender As Object, e As PropertyChangedEventArgs)' for interface System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged'.
And
'PropertyChanged' cannot implement 'PropertyChanged' because there is no matching event on interface 'System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged'.
Those error should never go together! Usually we can just ignore the exception and build the solution but often enough this bug stops our build. (this happens a lot using Edit and Continue which is annoying)
We're using Vb.net and c# mixed in one big solution.
Removing the PropertyChanged event and retyping the same code! sometimes fixes this.
Question:
Has anyone else seen this problem and has some suggestions how to prevent his?
We're using a code generator that causes this error to surface but just editing some files manually triggers this exception too. This error occur's on multiple machines using various setups.
Someone had the same exact issue discussed here. It sounds like there is an issue with this build picking up an old version of a binary. I would try the following in order:
Verify all assembly references use project references where possible within the Visual Studio solution.
Disable build parallelization in case there is some weird file locking issue with concurrent project builds. Go to Tools -> Options, Projects and Solutions -> Build and Run, then set "maximum number of parrellel project builds" to 1. Not the best solution but it may help narrow down the problem.
Disable the Hosting Process in case it's locking some file causing an assembly to not get rebuilt correctly. For C# project go to Project Properties, Debug tab, and uncheck "Enable the Visual Studio hosting process". For VB.NET project you'll need to Unload Project, Edit the project file, and add <UseVSHostingProcess>false</UseVSHostingProcess> to the PropertyGroup of each configuration. Again, not the best solution but you probably won't notice a difference.
Lastly, try doing a Clean + Build to try and resolve the issue when it occurs (I know this is not a fix but it's easy enough to do), also Rebuild may be slightly different than Clean + Build so try the latter if the former doesn't work.
As I can not comment due to lack of appropriate points.
But I would like to share one of my experience:
In an aspx.cs page I was working, used to compile fine and some time gave mysterious error of a variable not defined or function not defined or sometime variable or the function defined two times. I changed possibly each and every variable and function name but there seemed no effect , but after entering a simple space or a new line at any place in the file used to solve the compile error. At one time I tried to save the file (in a different encoding as i am used to experiments) and found that the file was not saving in the correct encoding (i.e. the ansi encoding because the file had a unicode character ), I removed the unicode character and that compile error didn't bothered me again.
This unicode character problem could be (not a hard and fast rule) there so you could check it.
Nuke & restore using source control (TFS instructions here):
Make sure you have everything checked in
Exit Visual Studio
Rename the project directory to .Bak (effectively deleting it)
Reopen Visual Studio and in source control:
Get Specific Version
check 'Overwrite... not checked out' and 'Overwrite ... even if local version matches'
Re-open project
Another problem: Make sure some source files are not newer than the current date (or your date is set back). Often this happens in apps where you are doing logic that requires certain things to happen differently on certain dates. You change your clock to test it, make a revision to the source with the date advanced, set the date back, and viola, rebuild does not rebuild that file.
You say 'typing it in again' - can you try just saving? After 40 years since MULTIX the .net build still decides what has changed by checking the file timestamp.
good luck!
When you get the error, is it always on the VB calling C# side, or vice-versa, or does it work both ways?
If the answer is either of the first two situations, try building the "callee" project within the solution before building the "caller" project to see if it stops the situation.
Also, just in case it may jog something for you to think about, does this error crop up when you change a VB file or a C# file, or is there no correllation?
Oh, and sorry this looks like an answer instead of a comment, I cannot post comments yet (need 50 rep).
I'm new to VB6 but i'm currently in charge of maintaining a horror of editor like tool with plenty of forms, classes, modules and 3rd party tools all chunk together like the skin faces on that guy in the texas chainsaw massacre...
What i don't understand is why i get different results when i run the app in debugging mode, vs when i compiled it and run it on my devevelopment pc vs when i installed it on a different pc.
Yes i know i'm dumb, so please direct me to where i can find out more about this. I'm hoping to find out something like different linking, registry related etc connection that i'm simply not getting right now, i.e. something like wax on, wax off :P
The main pain in the neck is when i'm trying to debug some errors from my QA and i need to find a spare pc to test this on plus i can't directly debug because i don't know where the code is if i do it that manner.
Thanks.
i run the app in debugging mode vs when i compiled it and run it on my
devevelopment pc
When you compile you have the option of compiling to native code or pcode. The debugger runs using pcode only. Under rare circumstances when you compile to native code there will be a change in behavior. This particular is really rare. I used VB6 since it's release and I may get it once or twice a year. My application is a complex CAD/CAM creating shapes and running metal cutting machine and has two dozen DLLs. Not a typical situation. At home with my hobby software I never ran into this problem.
There are another class of errors that result from event sequencing problems. While VB6 isn't truly multi-tasking it has the ability to jump out of the current code block to process a event. If it re-enters the same block for the new event interesting things (to say the least) can result. I think this is the likely source of your problems as you software is an editor which is a highly interactive type of software.
In general the problem is fixed by reordering the effected areas. You find the effected area by inserting MsgBox or write to a text file to log where you are. I recommend logging to a text file as MsgBox tend to alter behavior that are timing or multi-tasking related.
Remember if a event fire while VB6 in the middle of a code block and there a DoEvents floating around then it will leave the code block process the event and return to the original code block. If it re-enters the same code block and you didn't mean for this to happen then you will have problems. And you will have different problems on different computers as the timing will be different for each.
The easiest way to deal with this type of issues is create some flag variables. In multi-tasking parlance they are known as semaphores or mutexes. WHen you enter a critical section of code, you set it true. When you leave the routine you set it to false. If it is already true when you enter that section of code you don't execute it.
when i installed it on a different pc.
These are usually the result of the wrong DLL installed. Most likely you have an older version while the target has a newer version. I would download the free Virtual PC and create a clean Window XP install to double check this.
If your problem is event timing this too can be different on different computers. This is found by logging (not MsgBox) suspect regions.
If you can display a screen shot or the text of your specific errors then I can help better.
The first thing to check would be the versions of all the dlls that your app depends on - including the service pack version of the VB6 dll.
Have you any more specific details about what's behaving differently?