Question

I have a nice tidy way of capturing unhandled exceptions which I display to my users and (optionally) get emailed to myself. They generally look something like this:

Uncaught exception encountered in MyApp (Version 1.1.0)!

Exception:
   Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Exception type:
   System.NullReferenceException
Source:
   MyApp
Stack trace:
   at SomeLibrary.DoMoreStuff() in c:\projects\myapp\somelibrary.h:line 509
   at SomeAlgothim.DoStuff() in c:\projects\myapp\somealgorithm.h:line 519
   at MyApp.MainForm.ItemCheckedEventHandler(Object sender, ItemCheckedEventArgs e) in c:\projects\myapp\mainform.cpp:line 106
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListView.OnItemChecked(ItemCheckedEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListView.WmReflectNotify(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListView.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

Is it possible to launch visual studio and have it open c:\projects\myapp\somelibrary.h on the offending line and if so, how?

I’d also like to do this from the (html) email I generate if that’s possible?

Answer 1

You can automate Visual Studio, using for example VBScript:

filename = Wscript.Arguments(0)
lineNo = Wscript.Arguments(1)

' Creates an instance of the Visual Studio IDE.
Set dte = CreateObject("VisualStudio.DTE")

' Make it visible and keep it open after we finish this script.
dte.MainWindow.Visible = True
dte.UserControl = True

' Open file and move to specified line.
dte.ItemOperations.OpenFile(filename)
dte.ActiveDocument.Selection.GotoLine (lineNo)

Save this as say debugger.vbs and run it, passing the filename and line no as command line args:

debugger.vbs c:\dev\my_file.cpp 42