debugging - Delphi XE - EOleSysError, but only when running in IDE/debugger

Question

I have seen other questions with this same problem on XE Forums, but still no answer. I run my application from with the XE IDE and I get an EOleSysError - 'The system cannot find the path specified'.

But, I can go out to explorer to the same directory and run that same app outside the IDE and it runs fine. No errors. All of my assemblies are located in the build directory of the application, so I'm not relying on GAC or anything, just directory the executable is in.

Is this a known bug with XE and Windows 7 x64?

Is this a path problem? Environment variable issue? It almost seems like the IDE is running my exe from another directory, but the exe is only being compiled in one place.

Any help here would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Rick

Answer 1

It's not a bug at all. The debugger is catching the exception, and letting you know about it before it passes it to the exception handler in the code. It's working by design, letting the developer know that the exception happened.

If you want to avoid this happening, you can do one of a few things:

• (Easiest) Set a breakpoint on the line immediately before the exception is raised. Right-click the line, and choose Breakpoint properties from the context menu. Click the Advanced... button, and then uncheck the Break checkbox, and check the Ignore subsequent exceptions checkbox, and then click OK to close the dialog. Set a breakpoint on the line after the exception is raised, and repeat the process above, except this time check the Handle subsequent exceptions checkbox. I say this is easiest because you can disable it to break on the exception simply by disabling the breakpoints, and remove it entirely by just removing the breakpoints, and you get a visual indicator that something is different for that block of code.

• Disable IDE error handling for all EOleSysError exceptions, from the Tools->Options menu, find Debugger Options->CodeGear/Embarcadero Debuggers->Language Exceptions, and add EOleSysError to the Exception types to ignore dialog, and make sure the item is checked. It's the way Indy's exceptions are prevented from stopping the debugger, for instance.

• Just click the Continue button in the exception dialog, and let the code keep running. This gets a little annoying sometimes, such as when you're running code in a loop, and something in the loop is raising the exception; you keep getting the dialog over and over again.