Visual Studio 2010 suddenly stops displaying Debug output

Question

So there I am, working on a Silverlight app, and between one build & run and the next, my debug output goes away. Where before I had dozens of lines of Debug.Writeline text, I now have only the module load and thread messages.

Yes, I'm in debug mode (vs. release mode).

Yes, my Output window says "Show output from: Debug".

Yes, when I right-click on the output window, every option is checked.

No, my Tools > options > debugging > general > "Redirect all output text to the immediate window" is not checked.

All I can figure (and it's a wild guess) is that for some reason, the VS debugger isn't attaching to the Silverlight app like it should.

What's weird is this has been happening for the last couple of days, out of the blue. And just as suddenly, all my debug messages start showing up again.

This is VERY frustrating.

EDIT: Of course, after returning to the project after the weekend, all Debug messages are back. No idea what was causing the issue, so I'm sure it will happen again.

Now the question is: should I leave this question open in case the problem arises again in the near future? What happens to an unawarded bounty?

Answer 1

I had exactly the same issue. Out of the blue, debug.print stopped working. In my case, it used to go to the Immediate Window. Nothing there. Nothing in the Output window. I followed several suggestions to no avail until I found this one at http://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/26894732/Debug-Print-and-Debug-Write-no-longer-work-in-Visual-Studio-2010.html

There is a context menu in the Output/Debug pane. The "Program Output" menu item was accidentally cleared.

Checked the item and it started working again (even though my output was the immediate window). What a relief...

Answer 2

Check the Immediate Window. Check the options. There is a general setting that says "send Debug output to Immediate Window"

Answer 3

I found the same problem and just by setting options → debugging → output window → Thread Exit Messages to true the output windows was begin to send the right messages !?

Answer 4

Did you create or modify an Application config? If yes: the initial created configuration by VS does contains the necessary wiring configurations to enable the debugging at all. Not sure what and if there are counterparts in Silverlight, but in WPF environments simply replacing the app.config will have the same effect as you expierience.

Answer 5

Ensure that the DEBUG conditional compilation symbol is defined. The Debug class suggests that you "add the /d:DEBUG option to the compiler command line when you compile your code using a command line, or add #define DEBUG to the top of your file".