Debugging the Visual Studio Add-in

If you are looking to contribute to the code in the Add-in, you will find it helpful at times to be able to step through it in the Visual Studio debugger. The following steps show how to do so.

  1. Check out the source code for NPanday if you haven't already. More information on how to build it is available in Building NPanday.
  2. Open solution file: dotnet\NPanday.sln. You may need to choose 'Load project normally' in a warning dialog. The solution is for Visual Studio 2010 - if you are using a more recent version it may ask you to upgrade the project as well.
  3. Build the whole solution using the normal Visual Studio build solution command.
  4. Open this file using a text editor (notepad will do): My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Addins\NPanday.VisualStudio.AddIn. This should be the file for the version of Visual Studio you intend to debug it in, so change 2010 to 2005/2008 if desired (it need not be the same as the one you have the main solution open in).
  5. Change the value of the <Extensibility><AddIn><Assembly> to the following file within your checkout: dotnet\assemblies\NPanday.VisualStudio.Addin\target\NPanday.VisualStudio.Addin.dll. You must use the full path, for example: C:\Documents and Settings[username]\checkouts\npanday\assemblies\...
  6. Change the value of <Extensibility><AddIn><Description> to the correct version (including -SNAPSHOT) in order to get an additional output pane showing the debug log.
  7. Back in Visual Studio, from the NPanday solution, right click on the NPanday.VisualStudio.Addin project. Set it to be the Start up project of the solution.
  8. Right click on NPanday.VisualStudio.Addin again and select Properties
  9. Go to the Debug tab and select Start External Program in the Action section. Locate the devenv.exe of the version of Visual Studio that you want to debug. This is likely to be either C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe (Visual Studio 2010) or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe (Visual Studio 2008) or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe (Visual Studio 2005)
  10. You can now set any breakpoint on the project and press the "Run" button to open a new instance of Visual Studio with the current Add-in code loaded. Connect.cs is the main class of the Add-in and is the place to look for code to set breakpoints in to start with.
  11. The Visual Studio will lock the Add-in libraries as long as it runs. So it is recommended to disable the Add-in (rename AddIn-file to *.AddIn_) whenever you open the main solution. After the main solution is opened you can enable it again before you start/debug again.