If you develop modules for DotNetNuke you are probably aware of
Speerio's My Modules
. This is a great package but for me the problem was the I could no
longer debug properly with it. The issue was that objects in the watch
window would no longer expand when clicking on the 'plus sign' to the
left of it. I contacted Nik and he said I was the first one to run into
this and suggested a few things I could try. None worked. Oddly I was
seeing the same behavior at home and at work, both DNN 3.0.13 installs
but with different custom modules.
I did some Googling but the problem was finding the right search term. Eventually I used
VS.NET watch window problem "plus sign" and that brought me here:
http://www.dotnet247.com/247reference/msgs/37/185102.aspx
. I added a new AssemblyInfo.vb file to the _DDNStub project. This
resulted in a number of compilation errors. These can apparently safely
be ignored but it's annoying so I removed the offending imports from
the _DDNStub project. This didn't seem to have any adverse effects and
the solution compiles fine now.
Bottom line:
Pros: I can now effectively debug my DNN modules without the overhead
of checking all DNN modules. This is the big plus of My Modules over
the standard DNN solution.
Cons: there is an additional DNNStub.dll assembly that gets generated
as part of the solution. Given how hulking big DNN already is this
isn't a problem for me (debug size is 6 KB).
As I'm the only one with this problem and the solution isn't
particularly neat (see Cons) Nik didn't want to include this tip in his
release package. I hope that Google will find this article for the next
person who runs into this issue.
If someone has a better solution that doesnt' require DNNStub to be compiled I'd like to hear about it, please.
In closing I want to thank Nik for also providing the DNNDebug.aspx
page which has indeed already saved me a lot of time figuring out an
ascx problem. To use it simply navigate to
<DNNSITE>/DNNDebug.aspx and follow the instructions.