Application_Start not firing?

I have an ASP.NET MVC (beta) application that I'm working on, and am having trouble figuring out if I'm doing something wrong, or if my Application_Start method in Global.asax.cs is in fact not firing when I try to debug the application.

I put a breakpoint on a line in my Application_Start method, and am expecting that when I attempt to debug the application that the breakpoint should get hit... but it never does. Not after I reset IIS, not after I reboot, not ever. Am I missing something? Why is this method never getting called?

Solution 1:

Note : a nice easy alternative to using the inbuilt "Visual Studio Development Server" or IIS Express (e.g. because you are developing against IIS and have particular settings you need for proper functioning of your app) is to simply stay running run in IIS (I use the Custom Web Server + hosts file entry + IIS binding to same domain)

1. wait for debugging session to fire up ok
2. then just make a whitespace edit to the root web.config and save the file
3. refresh your page (Ctrl + F5)

Your breakpoint should be hit nicely, and you can continue to debug in your natural IIS habitat. Great !

Solution 2:

If this is in IIS, the app can get started before the debugger has attached. If so, I am not sure if you can thread sleep long enough to get attached.

In Visual Studio, you can attach the debugger to a process. You do this by clicking Debug >> Attach to process. Attach to the browser and then hit your application. To be safe, then restart IIS and hit the site. I am not 100% convinced this will solve the problem, but it will do much better than firing off a thread sleep in App_Start.

Another option is temporarily host in the built in web server until you finish debugging application start.

Solution 3:

The following helps in any case (no matter if you're using IIS, Cassini or whatever):

1. Set your breakpoint in Application_Start
2. Start debugging (breakpoint most probably is not hit) -> a page is shown in the browser
3. Change web.config (e.g. enter a blank line) and save it
4. Reload the page in the browser -> breakpoint is hit!

Why does this work? When web.config is changed, the web server (IIS, Cassini, etc.) does a recycle, but in this case (for whatever reason), the process keeps the same, so you keep attached to it with the debugger (Visual Studio).