Silverlight Error "Layout Cycle Detected Layout could not complete" when using custom control

I'm building a custom control in Silverlight by deriving from ContentControl and doing some special formatting to put a dropshadow behind the contents.

I've nearly got it working but have recently ran into a bizarre error. It works fine if it contains anything besides a Border, or a Grid/Stackpanel/etc that does not have an explicitly defined height and width.

I get a JavaScript error in IE, and the text says:

Runtime Error 4008... Layout Cycle Detected... Layout Could Not Complete.

If I specify a height and width on the contained grid/stackpanel/etc it works fine.

There is a ton on the web about this error when too many textboxes are used (over 250), but I'm able to reproduce my error with a single button in a grid.

I have no textboxes at all on the page. The error has to do with a detected infinite loop. I set a few breakpoints in the code and it seems that the "SizeChanged" event is getting called a lot during rendering, and each time the height/width increments by 10.

I'm assuming that setting a default height/width causes it to skip this incrementing of the number, but I have no idea why this error is happening.

Has anyone ran into this or have any ideas?

From stackoverflow

• There is a good blog post on this error here.

  Bascially what can happen is your changing some size in a measureoverride somewhere which causes another measure which changes the size which causes a measure and so on. I ran into this once before and fixed it by removing any code that caused a layout update or triggered a layout update during the layout cycle.

  Matthew Timbs : This is the problem I'm seeing. The linked blog post suggests only doing your layout stuff on initial load and when the silverlight app (the containing user control) changes its size. This might work for me, but I've not yet tested it when doing animations and other actions. Thanks for the help!

• A common cause is handling SizeChanged and then in the handler doing something that affects the size of the element. Sometimes this is not obvious - it could be modifying child elements which affect the size of their container for instance.