Problem redirecting debug output to a file using trace listener

Question

I have created a debug listener to redirect the output from the Debug/Console window to a file(with a call stack), using the following code:

void SomeMethod()
{
    // Create a file for output .txt.
    Stream debugFile = File.Create(fileName);

    // create TextWriterTraceListener named "file"
    TextWriterTraceListener debugWriter = new TextWriterTraceListener(debugFile, "file");

    // add to debug listeners
    Debug.Listeners.Add(debugWriter);
    // set callstack to be shown
    Debug.Listeners["file"].TraceOutputOptions |= TraceOptions.Callstack;
    // set auto-flush
    Debug.AutoFlush = true;
}

but the output won't redirect to the file I specified, it's always empty.

I am calling this from the constructor in my main form. Is the place where I'm calling it from a problem?

What I am trying to achieve here is to have the exceptions from the Debug output window placed in a file with a call stack, so that I can find them and correct them.

UPDATE: After some research I came to a conclusion that adding a new TraceListener to the Debug Listeners collection does not redirect the output from the Debug/Console. It is actually just responding to Write, WriteLine etc. methods as does the default listener. The problem still remains: How to capture the output of the Debug/Console window and how to get the stack trace of the exceptions that appear there?

Anyone have any ideas?

Placard

Are you sure you should be adding to Debug.Listeners? Calling Console.WriteLine and Debug.WriteLine produce different behaviors. If you are adding a Listener to Debug, but calling Console, it might cause the issue you're reporting. – Waxen

@Waxen - I'm not sure what exactly do you mean. What I'm trying to do here is to have the same output that I have in the Debug console window in Visual Studio to a file, but with a call stack for each exception that happens there. – Placard

You should try manually writing to your Debug listener by calling your function to set it up, then calling Debug.WriteLine("Debugger Initialized"); That should verify that everything is working. If you're just relying on the framework, you can't be sure which stream the output window is actually listening to. – Waxen

As a note, I implemented your method, then called Debug.WriteLine, and my message showed up in the text file. I suspect you need to override Console output or something else to capture what VS is capturing... EDIT: Actually, you should just have a top-level error handler that fails the application gracefully, writing the call stack to a log and displaying a friendly message to the user. – Waxen

@Waxen - I do have a global error handler that is not catching some of the errors that show up in the Debug/Console window, I'm trying to find out what they are and where to find them, this is the whole purpose I'm doing this. – Placard

Answer 1

Here's an article that answers a part of my question: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/trace/DbMonNET.aspx

i.e. how to capture the output of the Debug/Console window. But, it seems that there's no way of getting the stack trace from this output. Looking from this perspective it looks like a bad approach anyway.

FURTHER RESEARCH: Looks like these exceptions are appearing because they are handled in some other dll that is not linked properly, and they are handled there instead of my try/catch blocks. This is probably the place where I should be looking my error for i.e. where there's a dll reference I should instead add a project reference.

MORE RESEARCH: Enable breaking at exceptions in Visual Studio main menu: Debug -> Exceptions -> Check the type of exceptions you want the application to break at(Common Language Runtime)...There's no better way to deal with exceptions.

Placard