VS Arduino - Debugging breakpoints in header files

Oct 24^th, 2025 at 2:53pm (UTC)

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VS Arduino › › › Debugging breakpoints in header files

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Debugging breakpoints in header files (Read 3515 times)

ausculta Newbies Offline Posts: 8 Joined: Jul 6^th, 2022	Debugging breakpoints in header files Jul 6^th, 2022 at 3:13pm	Print Post
	I've got a rather large piece of ESP32 code broken down into a .ino file and .h header files containing a number of classes (declarations and implementation - yes, we know its not ideal practice but it's a lot easier to manage and work on than a 15,000 line .ino file). The header files are all #include'd into the .ino file. When I place a breakpoint in the .ino file VisualMicro stops correctly, etc. But when I place the breakpoint in the .h file they never trigger, even with a breakpoint in the .ino file too. If I take the code from the header file and move it to the .ino file, the breakpoints trigger. Is this expected? Is there a setting I haven't tried, yet, to use the header files as intended even when debugging? Thank you!


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Simon@Visual Micro Administrator Offline Posts: 2806 Joined: Feb 13^th, 2019	Re: Debugging breakpoints in header files Reply #1 - Jul 6^th, 2022 at 5:20pm	Print Post
	Thanks for the report. I believe this is expected behaviour, however if you use multiple INO files (same as "Tabs" in Arduino IDE), or CPP files the Serial debugging features should work as expected. Does this help?


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ausculta Newbies Offline Posts: 8 Joined: Jul 6^th, 2022	Re: Debugging breakpoints in header files Reply #2 - Jul 6^th, 2022 at 10:14pm	Print Post
	Thank you Simon. I had kind of expected this to be the answer, unfortunately, but was hoping there was a magic switch somewhere I hadn't found. I'll try with cpp files. The alternative would be to turn all the supporting classes into 1 or more libraries. Thanks.


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Tim@Visual Micro Administrator Offline Posts: 12201 Location: United Kingdom Joined: Apr 10^th, 2010	Re: Debugging breakpoints in header files Reply #3 - Jul 8^th, 2022 at 10:23pm	Print Post
	An alternative would be to use hardware debugging. It is only the serial/wifi debugger that can not currently debug .h files.


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ausculta Newbies Offline Posts: 8 Joined: Jul 6^th, 2022	Re: Debugging breakpoints in header files Reply #4 - Jul 9^th, 2022 at 5:02pm	Print Post
	Thank you Tim. I re-factored the code properly (I was being lazy). So now I've got a nice bunch of proper header files and CPP with my .ino. The .ino wouldn't compile when it had the same name as one of the .cpp files so I renamed it.


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Tim@Visual Micro Administrator Offline Posts: 12201 Location: United Kingdom Joined: Apr 10^th, 2010	Re: Debugging breakpoints in header files Reply #5 - Jul 9^th, 2022 at 5:14pm	Print Post
	Great, yes if you add a .cpp with same name as the [project_name].ino then it becomes an override for ALL .ino code. + The serial debugger can't work in that mode.
	« Last Edit: Jul 9^th, 2022 at 5:15pm by Tim@Visual Micro »

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Michael B Newbies Offline Posts: 3 Joined: Jun 2^nd, 2022	Re: Debugging breakpoints in header files Reply #6 - Jul 17^th, 2022 at 3:00am	Print Post
	99.9999% of my code is templates. Template interfaces and implementations must reside in the same translation unit. Standard practices are to put everything in a header <.h> file (e.g. the C++ Standard Library). So, without breaking any ANSI/ISO Standards or 30+ years of coding practice, what is your workaround for using the serial debugger in a header?


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