Is there a debug console in LabView?

[Cunk]

One of the features I've long taken for granted when developing in Visual Studio is the Debug Console.  It's extremely useful to be able to insert snippets of code that log whatever you want.  Additionally you don't have to Break execution to sample data or verify that a section of code has executed.

Does Labview offer a similar feature?  I've not seen anything in the time I've been using it but thought maybe there are third party tools to do this.

I suppose it wouldn't be all that hard to make something now that I think of it.

[crossrulz]

Like probes?  Or just running subVIs?

[Cunk]

Probes are certainly useful (and completely necessary even if a debug console was available) but they don't quite achieve the same thing.  For one the debug console leaves historical data intact since it's a scrolling log.  Also, probes aren't permanent (as far as I can tell).  As soon as you close the watch window they all get deleted.  Debug messages in other languages will remain in the code until you actually delete them.

Another term for this sort of thing is "tracing".  Here's a MS KB article about doing this in C#: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815788

If there's nothing obvious available already I may see if I can work on something of my own.  If I come up with anything I'll post here.

[chembo]

The LabVIEW Desktop Execution Trace Toolkit is very nice tool and you can even add user defined trace events which are recorded in the log file. And the NI IO Trace is also very helpful for troubleshooting VISA, DAQmx and many other communication protocols

[John_P1]

I use the WinDebugLogging.vi from here along with DebugView for viewing the results.

Best Regards,