Runtime Flow blog (Understanding a control flow in a running .NET application)

Runtime Flow v0.8.5 is released – added support for x64 applications, added support for Visual Studio 2005 (except for C++ startup projects).

Runtime Flow v0.8.0 is released – added tree expand and collapse commands, added display of thread names, added ability to monitor multiple modules, added the About dialog.

An application usually consists of the main executable and several additional dlls. Runtime Flow now collects all exe and dll outputs from a solution as a module filter and allows you to monitor function calls in all these modules:

For easier debugging you can name you threads, for example using the System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.Name property. Runtime Flow now displays these names in the control flow tree:

I’ve added three new commands to expand the whole tree one level further, expand nodes for selected function further and collapse the whole tree one level up:

I experimented with expanding not by one level, but expanding all nodes at once – it turns out to be slow and noisy as tens of thousands function calls can be collected and the most interesting control flows start closer to thread’s root anyway.

Please visit the Runtime Flow home page for the installer and the Quick Start guide.