Visual Studio 2015 “Apply Code Changes” is disabled

Question

When using Visual Studio 2015, “Apply Code Changes” is always disabled. I've seen MANY posts regarding this, but I haven't found a solution.

Here are some details:

• Project > Properties > Linker > General > Enable Incremental Linking is "Yes (/INCREMENTAL)".
• Project > Properties > C/C++ > General > Debug Information Format is "Program Database for Edit and Continue (/ZI).
• Tools > Options > Debugging > General > Enable Edit and Continue has a checkmark, as do Enable Native Edit and Continue, Apply changes on continue, Warn about stale code, and Allow precomiling are all checked.
• Project > Properties > General > Platform Toolset is set to "Visual Studio 2010 (v100)".
• I deleted my project's *.ilk file.

This was working with this project. I think it stopped working when I changed to the VS 2015 IDE (as noted above, I still compile it using the 2010 compiler).

Thanks!

Answer 1

The default debugger does not support Edit and Continue with v100 toolset.

Here's a workaround to get Native ENC working with older toolsets (eg. v100):

1. Add C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ (or corresponding path for a custom VS2010 install) to your VS environment PATH variable. You can add this through:

   • Global environment variables: Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Environment Variables… and Edit “Path”> New to add. -or-
   • Alternatively, you can open up a Developer Command Prompt for VS2015, call SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ and call devenv.
2. In Debug > Options, ensure “Use Native Compatibility Mode” and “Enable Native Edit and Continue” are enabled.
3. In your project properties, ensure the C/C++ > General > Debug Information Format is “Program Database for Edit and Continue (/ZI)”, among other settings (see my blog post for reference).