"Common Language Runtime detected an invalid program." error

[james.billings]

Sorry I've missed the previous updates on this, but I'll grab the repro now and test it out, thanks guys!

*EDIT*

- I do get the crash; but I don't have the relevant KB installed (probably as I'm on Windows but either way we can hopefully work out the trigger.

[james.billings]

The full list of KB's relating to the patches are here - this may explain why some users don't have the one originally listed?

pdorey- I notice in that same page a potential workaround for the original vulnerability the KB resolves when the problem relates to web-applications. May be worth you checking over that to see if it helps? Obviously it won't make any difference with the winforms version.

[james.billings]

I've logged an internal bug ref. PP-3010 relating to this issue. Confirmed that removing the 3 updates listed for Windows 8 on the KB page stops the crash occurring.

[sf]

Hi James,

Just wondering whether you made some progress during those last 2 weeks.

Thanks.

[james.billings]

The team have taken a look at it, and it's currently slated to be fixed in 8.1. It's too complex to be resolved in the initial release of 8.0 (due in the next couple of weeks) as that hit code-freeze recently for final bug-checking and documentation etc.
After 8.0 there'll be an 8.1 to tackle anything that comes up from wider usage of the initial release, and this issue is to be looked at then.

[sf]

Hello James,

Thank you for the update. Of course I think you understand that this does not exactly solve my issue

What are the short and long term solutions that could work for me?

1) Short term: should I ask my team to remove all updates back to a working state and refuse any new until 8.1 is out?
Or do you have a workaround? Such as a way to rewrite code, a patch or something?

2) Long term: I think I understand that my only option will be to purchase licenses for 8.1, am I right? Or are you planning to update previous versions too?

[james.billings]

I'd say in the interim you'd need to remove the updates. I spent a while trying to work out if you could change something specific in your code to get around it but no luck (or just don't use line-level timing of course, it was only that mode that seemed to trigger it).

It's very unlikely that any change to the profiler would be made in previous versions, so you'd need to update to version 8, yes.

[sf]

Hi James,

I noticed you released ANTS 8.0, congratulation!

Could you let me know the road-map for 8.1? I would like to know when you plan to release it and whether it will contain a fix for our issue.

Thank you.

[james.billings]

Hi,
Currently this issue is indeed slated to be fixed in 8.1 - I don't have a precise lead time on 8.1 but it's in the order of a few weeks rather than a few months.
Unless anything disasterous happens, I'd hope this is indeed fixed soon.

[JBrown16]

Any update on the timeline for fixing this? I desperately need line-level timings (and it's not an option for me to remove Windows updates). Thanks.

[james.billings]

I'm afraid we're still investigating precisely how to fix this in the tool - the IL that gets rewritten apparently doesn't look in any way "wrong" but investigations are ongoing.

A little more information was discovered today though - it seems the problem can be triggered by something as simple as an empty try/catch block in the constructor for a generic. Other causes are using, lock or foreach statements.

Another workaround asides from turning off line-level may be to move the constructor code into it's own method, and call this from within the constructor. It seems in some scenarios that is enough to stop the problem happening.