MonoDevelop watch window "evaluating..."

2
votes

Is there some trick to getting MonoDevelop's watch window to actually work?

I'm running MonoDevelop 2.8.2 under Windows debugging a C# app and the watch window nearly always just shows "Evaluating...". Occasionally, but rarely it will come good. I've also seen this while debugging MonoTouch apps.

I'd really like to use MonoDevelop more, but find myself constantly switching back to VS just for it's debugger.

1
debuggingmonodevelop
I'll second this. I'm using MonoDevelop on OSX Lion making a MonoTouch app, and nearly 50% of the times when it breaks at a breakpoint, all watches and expressions just says "Evaluating". I haven't found any other remedy than to stop the debugging session and restart the application and cross my fingers it'll work this time. I really wish they would make the debugging experience better and more reliable. – René

1 Answers

0
votes

I've found this happens a lot more when you have circular referencing structures.

You can cause MonoDevelop to fail to evaluate if the natural or custom ToString() method invokes a cyclic evaluation. Try to implement the ToString() override and limit what evaluation takes place.

Having said that, even with some protection in ToString(), my Immediate window is still constantly reporting that it's evaluating a bunch of properties for no apparent reason!