Source Code Debugging with BuildIt Libraries

I was working on the BuildIt libraries yesterday and got slightly distracted – I was looking for how to make a small change to the way the Nuget packages are generated and ended up investing time in getting symbol source server support added. At first I thought “this is going to be easy and so awesome” but this quickly turned into frustration as it just didn’t seem to work. Turns out that whilst I was able to successfully generate the nuget symbol package locally, what I’d forgotten is that because we separate our build and release process (done via Visual Studio Team Services), I needed to make sure all my source code files are added to the build artefacts. The nuget packages are generated as part of our release process, which includes generating the symbol package which needed to include the source code files.

The upshot is that I’ve got source code debugging added to both BuildIt.General and BuildIt.States, with other packages to get it as we roll out stable builds in the coming weeks.

To get source code debugging to work, the first step is to configure Visual Studio to use the symbolsource server when attempting to step through source code. I followed the instructions at http://www.symbolsource.org/Public/Home/VisualStudio, which I’ve repeated here with the exact setup I used:

In Visual Studio:

  • Go to Tools -> Options -> Debugger -> General.
    • Uncheck “Enable Just My Code (Managed only)”.
    • Uncheck “Enable .NET Framework source stepping”.
    • Check “Enable source server support”.
    • Uncheck “Require source files to exactly match the original version”

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With this all setup, you’ll find that the next time you run your application it will be incredibly slow to start debugging as it has to go through and look up the symbols for each library you have references. However, when you do finally get your application up and running you’ll be able to step through and see more information about what’s going wrong with third party libraries that have symbol and source code support.

For the BuildIt libraries (General and States) the only additional step is to update to the latest stable release (1.1.0.75 at time of writing). Run the application, and you can now step through on calls made to functions contained within these libraries. You’ll also be able to intercept any exceptions that are raised within the libraries.

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Happy Debugging!

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