What’s New for the Debugger in Visual Studio 2012
Windows Store apps
The Visual Studio debugger provides complete support for debugging Windows Store apps that run on Windows 8. For more information, see the following sections in the Windows Dev Center:
Remote Debugging
The Visual Studio remote debugging process has been simplified. Installing and running the remote debugger no longer requires manual firewall configuration on either the remote computer or the Visual Studio computer. You can easily discover and connect to computers that are running the remote debugger by using the Select Remote Debugger Connection dialog box.
For more information, see Remote Debugging Setup.
Deployment of files for remote debugging in Visual C++ has also been simplified. The Deploy option on the project shortcut menu automatically copies the files specified in the debugging configuration properties to the remote computer. Copying files manually to the remote computer is no longer required. For more information, see Remote Debugging of a Project Built Locally.
Parallel Debugging
Two new windows have been added for debugging parallel applications:
The GPU Threads window displays the status and the details of the threads running on the GPU.
The Parallel Watch window displays values of a single expression across multiple threads at the same time.
The debugging windows now include these thread-aware features:
The GPU Threads, Threads, Parallel Tasks, Parallel Stacks, and Parallel Watch windows support the “Show Flagged Only” option as a toolbar button.
You can flag and unflag threads from the GPU Threads, Threads, Parallel Tasks, Parallel Stacks, and Parallel Watch windows.
The Debugger Location toolbar has a button for “Unflag All Threads.
The shortcut menu of the code gutter has “Flag All At This Location” and “Unflag All At This Location” options.
You can flag threads across processes.
You can freeze and thaw threads from both the GPU Threads window and the Parallel Watch window.
You can sort, reorder, configure, and group on the columns in the GPU Threads, Threads, Parallel Tasks, and Parallel Watch windows.
For more information, see one of the following topics: How to: Use the GPU Threads WindowHow to: Use the Parallel Watch WindowC++ AMP Overview
IntelliTrace Debugging
You can record diagnostic events with the IntelliTrace collector for SharePoint 2010 applications running outside Visual Studio. This lets you save user profile events, Unified Logging System (ULS) events, and IntelliTrace events to an .iTrace file. You can open this file in Visual Studio Ultimate to start diagnosing SharePoint 2010 applications in production or other environments. See Collect IntelliTrace Data Outside Visual Studio with the Standalone Collector.