How can I find a method caller when stepping through C# in Visual Studio 2008?

Question

If I set a breakpoint on a method, how can I see what called the method, when the breakpoint is hit in Visual Studio 2008?

Answer 1

Check the Call Stack window (Debug, Windows, Call Stack). Double clicking each entry there will take you to the calling statement. You can also right click on it to enable/disable showing external code items and calls from other threads.

Answer 2

If you can't see anything in the call stack at a user-set breakpoint, it generally means it was called from native code.

Another case where it can't get a stack: You hit Debug>Break All and the main thread is in a wait/sleep state, the debugger can have problems building the call stack. I believe the debugger uses the main thread for its implicit function evaluation.

Try attaching (or launching) the mixed-mode (native & managed) code debugger and see if that straightens it out.

Answer 3

When the breakpoint is hit, you can view the entire call stack. You can bring that window up by going through the Debug menu->Windows->Call Stack.

You can also bring it up by the shortcut Alt+Ctrl+C

EDIT: You can also right-click on a function name, and view the "Callers Graph", which will show you all the callers for your method. Alternatively, you can bring the Call Browser (by going to View->Other windows->Call Browser ) and search for your method's name.

Answer 4

If you can't see anything in the Call Stack window, then there's definitely something wrong. I would suggest the famous sequence of R-actions:

• Retry
• Recompile
• Restart
• Reinstall :)

Answer 5

If the break point is in a function that is raised by an event, you might not have a direct call stack back to the caller, and will need to enable viewing all code, and not just "just my code".