These release notes contain information that might not appear in the Help. Read them in their entirety before you install the product.
Note: This document contains a number of links to external web sites. Micro Focus cannot be responsible for the contents of the website or for the contents of any site to which it might link. Web sites by their nature can change very rapidly and although we try to keep our links up-to-date, we cannot guarantee that they will always work as expected.
DevPartner Studio Professional Edition is a suite of tightly integrated development features. DevPartner Studio incorporates code reviewing, error detection, two kinds of performance analysis, coverage analysis, and a memory analysis feature all integrated into Visual Studio. DevPartner Studio helps developers detect, diagnose, and resolve software bugs, maximize code performance, and ensure optimal code coverage and testing.
If you accessed this document from the product media or from the program shortcuts on your desktop, you may not be reading the latest release notes. For the most recent information, go to SupportLine, Micro Focus's customer care web site. The first time you access SupportLine, you are required to register and obtain a password. After logging on to SupportLine, click the Product Documentation link on the left side of the page, then click the link for your product. You will find the latest release notes listed with the other product documentation.
For installing product updates obtained through the Micro Focus SupportLine Product Update web site, refer to the applicable product update readme document. For licensing, system requirements, supported environments, and installation information, see the online help available with the Micro Focus License Management System and the DevPartner Studio Installation Guide.
DevPartner Studio provides an installation guide in PDF format. Users can print any product documentation offered in PDF format by opening the document and using the Adobe Reader print options. The DevPartner Installation Guide is also accessible from the DevPartner installation media, by clicking on the "Read the installation guide" link on the initial setup page. These documents can be opened and printed prior to installation.
(If you do not have the Adobe Reader, you can download it from the Adobe Web site.)
Before installation, note the following:
Refer to the DevPartner Studio Installation Guide for more information on installation options.
Information about DevPartner is available through the DevPartner InfoCenter option in the
Start>Programs>Micro Focus>DevPartner Studio menu. For general product information,
refer to the Understanding DevPartner manual and the DevPartner Studio Quick Reference guide
available in PDF format through the DevPartner InfoCenter.
(If you do not have the Adobe Reader to read PDF documents, you can download it from the Adobe Web site.)
DevPartner Studio 11.0.0 provides full Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 support. This includes full support the analysis of applications developed using Microsoft Visual Studio, and full integration into the Visual Studio 2012 IDE. Analyze, detect errors and perform static code reviews in existing supported project types and new Visual Studio 2012 project types.
DevPartner 11.0.0 lets you test and analyze any applications that leverage CLR 4.5, the common language runtime for .NET 4.5. CLR 4.5 support includes all DevPartner supported project types in Visual Studio 2012.
The FinalCheck feature of Error Detection has been streamlined and now has improved performance, allowing larger applications with instrumented code to finish FinalCheck in significantly less time. Other general performance improvements have also been made for DevPartner Studio 11.0.0.
The ability to track single objects in memory remains a desired feature. DevPartner 11 provides a new tracking option during interactive inspection. Inside BoundsChecker's Memory and Resource Viewer, right clicking any of the live individual memory blocks and choosing Track Selected Memory Block tags a specific allocated block for tracking. Any subsequent change of block references appear as transcript entries with full stack trace details. This laser-like precision gives a highly selective and low incremental overhead approach to tracking mischievous code making unwanted accesses and references to individual memory blocks, something BoundsChecker must keep track of, but now made visible in the transcript.
This release continues to strengthen 64-bit application support and scalability across the DevPartner Studio feature set, with general improvements in COM on x64, performance enhancements in Final Check instrumented applications under BoundsChecker, and stability fixes for mixed .NET/native applications.
No Windows versions were added or dropped in DevPartner 11.0. Customers awaiting Windows 8 and Server 2012 can expect x64 and x86 compatibilites to ship in a future 11.x point release.
SuspendThread() API in user code and within .NET framework.Redefined the BoundsChecker UseIsBadReadPtr flag
ReadProcessMemory alwaysReadProcessMemory when debugging, otherwise use IsBadReadPtrIsBadReadPtr alwaysnew and delete which in turn use operator new and free.The DevPartner 10.6 release includes preliminary support for Visual Studio 11 beta. Visual Studio 11 beta was released on February 29, 2012. This release does not support Windows 8 Developer Preview or Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
DevPartner has added a new feature to Coverage Analysis and Performance Analysis that collects coverage and performance data based on when a method is called. You can use this feature to tailor data collection to a specific thread or threads in an application. Control over data collection timing also allows starting and warming up an application prior to data collection with reduced overhead from DevPartner.
DevPartner now supports application instrumentation using Microsoft's ability to compile multiple projects in parallel.
Modified DevPartner instrumentation settings in VS2010 and later apply to only the current active configuration. Each configuration now has its own instrumentation settings. This allows batch builds that can for example build a debug version, debug BoundsChecker version, release, and release PA/CA version of their application. This also eases the ability to have a nightly build system build all configurations for DevPartner users.
DevPartner has improved its integration with MSBuild, setting up a build in DevPartner to use MSBuild is as simple as selecting the type of instrumentation for the configuration you wish to instrument.
Then when building in Visual Studio or outside of Visual Studio using the
command line, MSBuild is used. The NMDevEnv utility wraps DevEnv, which in turn wraps MSBuild.
DevPartner and Xoreax IncrediBuild together provide distributed builds, combining IncrediBuilds's grid engine with DevPartner's compile time instrumentation framework. Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta distributed builds require DevPartner Studio 10.6 and IncrediBuild 4.0 or later from Xoreax. Further updates for Visual Studio 11 may be needed throughout the Beta and GA periods.
For more details, review the white paper Reducing Application Development Cycle Times with Micro Focus DevPartner and Xoreax IncrediBuild which describes using DevPartner with the IncrediBuild distributed build engine from inside Visual Studio. This white paper is available on the SupportLine Product Documentation page for the most recent available DevPartner release.
DevPartner now displays an activity monitor that shows the internal activity of Error Detection, including all hooked function calls while running an application. It also notifies users when an application stops responding.
The Memory Resource Viewer can now be accessed while running an application with BoundsChecker stand-alone or with Error Detection inside Visual Studio. Once an application starts, choose Debug > DevPartner Memory / Resource Viewer from the menu, or click the Memory Resource Viewer button in BoundsChecker standalone to display the Memory and Resource Viewer dialog box.
Starting with this DevPartner release, the Compuware Distributed Licensing System (DLM) has been replaced with Micro Focus License Management System. This new licensing system has all of the features of DLM. It also allows users to migrate a license between computers without the need to contact Customer Care.
DevPartner now includes the ability to check for and notify users of any product updates.
With this release of DevPartner, all supported languages are available from a single install. Additional languages may be available in future releases.
If you have Internet access, visit the DevPartner Documentation page on the Micro Focus SupportLine site to view the Micro Focus Knowledge Base for additional DevPartner Studio issues and other information. The Knowledge Base is updated with new information as it becomes available.
Coverage Analysis, Performance Analysis
Error Detection
Currently, the recommended method for testing Internet Explorer 8.0 applications is to use the Web Script Coverage and Web Script Performance Utilities (Start > Micro Focus > DevPartner Studio > Utilities > Web Script Coverage for coverage testing and Start > Micro Focus > DevPartner Studio > Utilities > Web Script Performance for performance testing).
However, if doing Web site coverage or performance testing within Visual Studio is required, the following must be done.
IEXPLORE.EXE process.
It is listed in all capital characters as shown.All mixed-mode or managed applications profiled under Error Detection either with or without instrumentation require API metadata to function fully and properly. This is regardless of whether you are using the .NET Analysis or .NET Call Reporting features.
To generate API metadata for .NET system assemblies, you must execute the DevPartner Studio utility NLBFileInstaller.exe
with elevated privileges. This utility is located at <%CommonProgramFiles%\Micro Focus\NMShared\5.5>. To execute the file with
elevated privileges, right-click the file and select the menu option to run the executable as Administrator.
NLBFileInstaller.exe should also be executed with elevated privileges whenever .NET assemblies change or are updated on the computer
profiling under Error Detection, such as after a new .NET framework is installed. Execution time of this utility varies based on the number of .NET
APIs to be processed and the speed of the machine.
The first time that an application is run with Error Detection, you may see a dialog from Microsoft Internet Symbol Store detailing their Terms of Use. You must accept the Terms of Use to continue, even if you have previously accepted these Terms of Use when running a different program that also required Microsoft symbols.
This section presents known issues that apply to this release of DevPartner Studio. Click a category to view the list of issues.
Suite-wide Issues
Coverage Analysis
Error Detection
Performance Analysis
Issues Related to Visual Studio or to Visual Studio Team System
Systems with the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) setting configured as /NoExecute=Always On and the CPU's Execute Disable bit enabled
might prevent DevPartner Studio from loading into Visual Studio.
See article number 875352 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base for a detailed description of the Data Execution Prevention feature.
System-wide DEP is set in the BOOT.INI file using the /NoExecute option on the system boot partition. By default this is
set to OptIn, which specifies that DEP is only enabled for essential Windows programs and services.
Setting this to AlwaysOn causes the DevPartner Studio installation to fail, and if the setting is changed to AlwaysOn after
changes to AlwaysOn after installation, the DevPartner Visual Studio package to fail to load into Visual Studio.
If you set DEP to OptOut, be sure to include the Visual Studio executable (DEVENV.EXE for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008)
in the list of programs and services that are not to run with DEP.
When profiling a Web application with Windows Internet Explorer 7 64-bit (IE) using Coverage Analysis or Performance Analysis, script debugging data does not generate. System DLL calls can be monitored for IE with Performance Analysis and server coverage occurs with Coverage Analysis, but correlating script debugging data does not generate. Note this only occurs with Web applications in IE 7 64-bit. This issue will be addressed in a future DevPartner release.
Session files created in Visual Studio from profiling WPF Browser applications may not load or display in Visual Studio. An inconsistency in Visual Studio's Presentation Host may cause a scenario where DevPartner cannot correctly determine which Internet Explorer (32-bit or 64-bit) is being used. Session data can display in the Performance Analysis or Coverage Analysis viewer, however the viewer cannot be resized and can only be closed. This issue only occurs with 64-bit operating systems and only when the project's Visual Studio Debug - Start Action property is set to Start browser with URL.
To work around this issue:
\\Windows\SysWOW64\PresentationHost.exe.
-debug.This forces the correct instance of the Presentation Host to be used with a WPF Browser application that uses 64-bit Internet Explorer.
Data collected for Coverage Analysis or Performance when profiling 64-bit projects that use the OpenMP API may be incorrect. Line counts and performance timings are potentially attributed to an entire OpenMP block, rather than being disbursed to individual lines of code. This issue will be addressed in a future DevPartner WebSync or release. See www.openmp.org for information on OpenMP.
Running Error Detection with Coverage Analysis against a managed or mixed mode 64-bit application on a 64-bit operating system does not produce Coverage Analysis data or a Coverage Analysis session file. To work around this issue, run Coverage Analysis without Error Detection when running 64-bit applications on a 64-bit operating system. This issue will be addressed in a future DevPartner WebSync or release.
Memory Analysis and Performance Expert session files created using DevPartner Studio releases prior to 10.5.0 do not load properly in DevPartner Studio 10.5.0. This issue does not impact Performance Analysis or Coverage Analysis session files created in earlier versions of DevPartner Studio. A conversion utility for Memory Analysis and Performance Expert session files created with releases prior to DevPartner 10.5.0 will be available in a future release or WebSync.
Collected static initialization data may not display for partial class member fields that have a constructor implemented in a different source file than the statically initialized fields. In these cases, source view may show no data for the static member field initialization. This is because the data is attributed to the constructor of the partial class and not the assignment statement for the static initialization of the field. If a source file only contains statically initialized member fields for a class, the source file is not shown in the list of source files for the module in the results.
In some cases, when you profile custom Windows services while logged in through Terminal Services, you may not get session files. If this occurs on your system, you may be able to save the session data by specifying the full path and filename for the session file. For example:
DPAnalysis.exe /cov /output c:\temp\MyService.dpcov /s MyService
Note: This may not work in all cases.
You may be unable to merge coverage session files for ASP.NET applications.
DevPartner Studio can only merge coverage session files from the same build of your ASP.NET application. With ASP.NET, the executable name changes every time you rebuild the solution.
To avoid this issue, run all coverage sessions that you intend to merge without rebuilding your application between sessions.
When an application tested under BoundsChecker on the Windows 7 operating system encounters an unhandled exception, BoundsChecker is unable to prevent that application from terminating immediately. On earlier releases of Windows operating systems, BoundsChecker retained control of the application long enough to obtain a final memory leak report. On Windows 7, the application simply terminates. The session transcript notes the termination, but does not report the exception itself, and does not generate memory leak messages about what may still be allocated in memory.
In these instances, a final memory leak report may not contain much useful data, because the application does not get the chance to perform an orderly shutdown.
Error Detection still reports some leaks and errors even if all modules are OFF under the Error Detection Settings, because:
If profiling an Internet Information Server (IIS) Web Project using Performance Analysis within Visual Studio, if any process that accesses the local IIS (such as the Visual Studio 2010 Help Viewer) and then Visual Studio is stopped, restarting Visual Studio and starting an IIS Web Project may cause IIS to stop responding.
Perform the following steps to workaround this issue.
In some cases, CPU time attributable to the expression part of a For loop can be incorrectly attributed to the body of the
For loop. This can occur in loops formatted so that the initializers, expression, and iterators appear on a single line, as in
the example below.
using System;
public class ForLoopTest
{
public static void Main()
{
for (int i=1; i<=5; i++)
Console.WriteLine(i);
}
}
If the body of the For loop appears to be consuming excessive CPU time, reformat your code so the initializers, expression,
and iterators appear on separate lines, as shown below.
{
for (int i=1;
i<=5;
i++)
Console.WriteLine(i);
}
If you install a DevPartner supported version of Visual Studio after your DevPartner Studio installation, follow this two-step process to integrate the two products:
The second step is required to integrate the DevPartner Studio help system with the Microsoft help system.
When using DevPartner Studio with a localized version of Visual Studio Team System, in which the name of the WorkItemType Bug has been localized to a string other than 'Bug', DevPartner Studio is not able to create and submit bugs to the Team Project.
If ever you have any problems or you would like additional technical information or advice, there are several sources. In some countries, product support from Micro Focus may be available only to customers who have maintenance agreements.
If you obtained this product directly from Micro Focus, contact us as described below. If you obtained it from another source, such as an authorized distributor, contact them for help first. If they are unable to help, contact us as described below.
However you contact us, please try to include the information below, if you have it. The more information you can give, the better Product Support can help you. But if you don't know all the answers, or you think some are irrelevant to your problem, please give whatever information you have.
Our Web site gives up-to-date details of contact numbers and addresses. The product support pages contain considerable additional information, including the WebSync service, where you can download fixes and documentation updates. To connect, enter www.microfocus.com in your browser to go to the Micro Focus home page.
If you are a Micro Focus Product Support customer, please see your Product Support Handbook for contact information. You can download it from our Web site or order it in printed form from your sales representative. Support from Micro Focus may be available only to customers who have maintenance agreements.
End of DevPartner for Visual C++ BoundsChecker Suite Release Notes
Copyright © Micro Focus 2001-2012. All Rights Reserved.
07/13/2012 03:03 PM