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Debugging a full-screen application

Given that I only have one monitor, what's the best way to debug a program that uses a full screen (like a DirectX application)? Tools such as a step-by-step debugger seem useless in this context. In addition, printing to the console is not so effective, since you can watch the console only after the application is completed.

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6 answers

Remote debugging is not an option?

Otherwise, you can take a second monitor (with a video card).

And if all else fails, you can return to the sound signals.

(Or find the old dot matrix printer and write each line to the printer ;-))

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To just view some runtime information, I would overlay the debug text in full screen. If it were me, I would aim the application to be able to run windows, and also - although debugging on the screen is good for testing the game (if it is a game).

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Printf debugging is slow, painful, and flawless.

fill in code full of trace lines e.g.

fprint(logfile,"%s:%d\n",__FILE__,__LINE__);

or water resistant needed for your tongue and run it. after your completion, you can go through what he did. Make sure you have plenty of time and space for your hard drive, though. This has some advantages, so you can “run” things in the opposite direction and distinguish one start from the next.

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I will go with what BCS said and add that DebugView by SysInternals allows you to connect to it remotely from another machine.

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You can test 99% of the code in windowed mode, then for the parts that need to be done in fullscreen mode, you can switch to fullscreen mode, run some tests and immediately return (either programmatically or using the alt-tab).

Basically, I want to emphasize that most of the code will not be dependent on full screen and can be tested in a small window.

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Maybe you should consider reading Joseph Newcomber's essay on graphical developer interfaces at http://www.flounder.com/gdi.htm

You may not be coding in MFC, but you can get some useful ideas. He also received many other interesting articles.

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