The future of debugging is here! Visual Studio 2010 now supports stepping back in the debugger.

In my previous post Getting Started with Visual Studio 2010 IntelliTrace: Hello IntelliTrace!, I described how to use the new IntelliTrace feature in Visual Studio 2010 to debug an application. But there's more to IntelliTrace. IntelliTrace also allows you step back in the debugger! However, the step back functionality isn't enabled by default. You can enable this feature via Tools->Options->IntelliTrace. On the IntelliTrace Options dialog, select the IntelliTrace events and call information option. This is shown in the dialog below.

After selecting the option, you can now use the debugger step back through the code. In the following screenshot, you can see a before and after screenshot. On the left hand side (screen 1), the Step Back button is highlighted. The right hand side (screen 2) shows what happens after I've clicked the Step Back button, i.e. the debugger has stepped back into the calling function, Main().

We are very excited about IntelliTrace and we think it's going to change developers' lives. If you have any questions or feedback about IntelliTrace, feel free to drop me a line.

Habib Heydarian.