Display a message in Visual Studio s output window when not debug mode

Question

In Java  you can use System out println message  to print a message to the output window   What s the equivalent in Visual Studio    I know when I m in debug mode I can use this to see the message in the output window   Debug WriteLine  Debug   User Id     Session  User Id     System Diagnostics Trace WriteLine  Debug   User Id     Session  User Id       How can this be done without debugging in Visual Studio

User · Answer

The Trace messages can occur in the output window as well  even if you re not in debug mode  You just have to make sure the the TRACE compiler constant is defined

User · Answer

To write in the Visual Studio output window I used IVsOutputWindow and IVsOutputWindowPane  I included as members in my OutputWindow class which look like this     public class OutputWindow   TextWriter      region Members    private static readonly Guid mPaneGuid   new Guid  AB9F45E4-2001-4197-BAF5-4B165222AF29      private static IVsOutputWindow mOutputWindow   null    private static IVsOutputWindowPane mOutputPane   null      endregion     region Constructor    public OutputWindow DTE2 aDte          if  null    mOutputWindow               IServiceProvider serviceProvider          new ServiceProvider aDte as Microsoft VisualStudio OLE Interop IServiceProvider         mOutputWindow   serviceProvider GetService typeof SVsOutputWindow   as IVsOutputWindow             if  null    mOutputPane              Guid generalPaneGuid   mPaneGuid        mOutputWindow GetPane ref generalPaneGuid  out IVsOutputWindowPane pane          if   null    pane                  mOutputWindow CreatePane ref generalPaneGuid   Your output window name   0  1           mOutputWindow GetPane ref generalPaneGuid  out pane                 mOutputPane   pane                endregion     region Properties    public override Encoding Encoding   gt  System Text Encoding Default      endregion     region Public Methods    public override void Write string aMessage    gt  mOutputPane OutputString    aMessage  n       public override void Write char aCharacter    gt  mOutputPane OutputString aCharacter ToString        public void Show DTE2 aDte          mOutputPane Activate        aDte ExecuteCommand  View Output   string Empty          public void Clear     gt  mOutputPane Clear        endregion     If you have a big text to write in output window you usually don t want to freeze the UI  In this purpose you can use a Dispatcher  To write something in output window using this implementation now you can simple do this   Dispatcher mDispatcher   HwndSource FromHwnd  IntPtr mDte MainWindow HWnd  RootVisual Dispatcher   using  OutputWindow outputWindow   new OutputWindow mDte       mDispatcher BeginInvoke DispatcherPriority Normal  new Action      gt          outputWindow Write  Write what you want here

User · Answer

The results are not in the Output window but in the Test Results Detail  TestResult Pane at the bottom  right click on on Test Results and go to TestResultDetails    This works with Debug WriteLine and Console WriteLine

User · Answer

The Trace WriteLine method is a conditionally compiled method   That means that it will only be executed if the TRACE constant is defined when the code is compiled   By default in Visual Studio  TRACE is only defined in DEBUG mode     Right Click on the Project and Select Properties   Go to the Compile tab   Select Release mode and add TRACE to the defined preprocessor constants   That should fix the issue for you

User · Answer

This whole thread confused the h  l out of me until I realized you have to be running the debugger to see ANY trace or debug output   I needed a debug output  outside of the debugger  because my WebApp runs fine when I debug it but not when the debugger isn t running  SqlDataSource is instantiated correctly when running through the debugger    Just because debug output can be seen when you re running in release mode doesn t mean you ll see anything if you re not running the debugger   Careful reading of Writing to output window of Visual Studio  gave me DebugView as an alternative  Extremely useful   Hopefully this helps anyone else confused by this

User · Answer

For me this was the fact that debug writeline shows in the Immediate window  not the Output  My installation of VS2013 by default doesn t even show an option to open the Immediate window  so you have to do the following   Select Tools - gt  Customize  Commands Tab View   Other Windows menu bar dropdown Add Command    The Immediate option is in the Debug section    Once you have Ok d that  you can go to View -  Other Windows and select the Immediate Window and hey presto all of the debug output can be seen   Unfortunately for me it also showed about 50 errors that I wasn t aware of in my project    maybe I ll just turn it off again  -

[visual-studio] Display a message in Visual Studio's output window when not debug mode?

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