I need to debug some assemblies due to they throw exceptions. It's my assemblies but I don't have the source code of them. What I have is their pdb files.
Is there any way to debug that assemblies by Visual Studio?
--EDIT--
Of course, I also can disassembly them to get *.il files of them. Would it help me somehow?
35 Answers
Actually there are a few ways to accomplish this:
- Use dnSpy - a free opensource .net debugger and assembly editor
- Setup symbol server with dotPeek (also free)
- Use Resharper decompiler to load symbols for external modules in your visual studio. I think this is the easiest way. I've described the whole process on my blog
This is exactly why I paid for Reflector. Need to debug someone else's assembly? It works perfectly.
As far as I know, the PDB files are just pointers for debugging. That is, if you don't have the source code then the PDB files will only give you the stacktrace.
I don't know if Visual Studio can handle it, you might need to hook up manually to the process.
2Not exactly in visual studio, but I wrote in the past such a tool inside reflector, calle d Deblector. Is no longer mantained by me but have a look. Of course the debugging experience is not the same you can have in Visual Studio, but is sometimes enought to get you out of troubles.
2Check out dotPeek:
You can set this up as a symbol server inside visual studio to generate PDB files which allow you to debug. It is very easy to use and just as good as many of the paid products.
You can add libraries directly from nuget, or point to the DLL.
