Easier attachment of debbuger to ASP.NET application

Question

I am one of those devs who likes to find a bug, detach the debugger, fix the bug, rebuild the solution, re-attach the debugger, and refresh the page. This is much more preferable to me than outright stopping the debugger altogether and then restarting the app from the default page. When I was using VS 2010, I followed a smooth set of steps to do this:

• CTRL+ALT+D to detach
• CTRL+SHIFT+P to attach
• When the process list window popped up, the browser that was pointing to localhost was always sorted to the bottom due to alphabetic sorting, so I'd hit CTRL+END to go to the bottom, hit UP a few times to highlight the browser, and ENTER to finally attach the debugger to that browser.

With VS 2013, though, things are different. The process list no longer shows the browser URL in the Title column, but the title of the web page. Because the title can vary, the browser's position in the list can vary. This means that attaching the debugger is a bit of an inconvenience because you have to go searching for it in the list because it's never in the same location.

What would really be nice is if there were a way to automatically attach the debugger to the window that the debugger was last attached to. This would make detaching/attaching the debugger easier even when you're hosting your local app through IIS.

What's a smooth set of debugging steps that would closely match what I am trying to do?

Answer 1

Have you tried VSCommands extension for Visual Studio 2013?

It comes with Attach To IIS command:

Answer 2

I use different app pools on my local machine for each "group" of sites I need to work on. When I have to attach to a site, I can see it in the list and differentiate it from the other worker processes pretty easily by looking at the User Name field.