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

I’ve recorded two screencasts showing Runtime Flow in action.

Runtime Flow v1.0.5 released – added function parameters and return values monitoring, added the Customized Run dialog, added support for the relative output paths in the Visual Studio build options.

I’ve added the Customized Run dialog that allows to directly adjust parameters for the running executable and module filter:

For example, you can add to the module filter the .NET framework dlls to get deeper understanding of what is going on:



The empty filter allows monitoring for all modules:

The customized run settings are not currently saved when you exit from Visual Studio. I’ve not yet decided what is the best way to store it (globally, per solution, per project, per build configuration) and how these custom settings should interact with the debug settings in a Visual Studio’s solution used by the Run command.

I’ve added ability to catch and display function parameters and return values in Runtime Flow. Currently only primitive types such as bool, int, char, double and string are supported plus one dimensional arrays containing such types. Objects of other types are displayed as dots:

Strings longer than 50 characters are trimmed to not overrun the screen:

When number of elements in an array is more than 10, the first nine elements are displayed + number of skipped element + the last element:

When an exception occurs the function return value is displayed as Ex:

It’s technically possible to display data in objects of more complex types too and I’ll most probably return to monitoring of function parameters in next versions of Runtime Flow.

Runtime Flow in real time monitors function calls in a running .NET application and shows them in a control flow tree. The main purpose of the tool is to help developers better understand interworking in a large .NET codebase specific for a selected use case.

Runtime Flow v1.0 integrates with Visual Studio 2005/2008 and monitors .NET 2.0 – 3.5 desktop applications. Both x86 and x64 platforms are supported.

Support for web projects, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 is planned.

Visit Runtime Flow home page, read the Quick Start guide and explore your own applications with the fully functional 60 day trial.