CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netvisual-studiovisual-studio-2010
bluediapente
bluediapente

Reputation: 3976

Is there any way to add source code browsing for referenced libraries in Visual Studio?

I had been working with Java in IntelliJ IDEA (which I love) for the past few months and I kind of got used to adding the source code of the external libraries I was using in the IDE so that I could browse through it. I found this to be the best documentation most of the times since when I wanted to know what a method did I could just click on it, "Go To Implementation". Maybe I'm just too curious.

I'm back to working in C# in Visual Studio and I'm kind of missing that kind of stuff. I am working with some open source libraries with which I would like to be able to do something similar as in IntelliJ. Of course I could just add the code in the solution, but I guess that would mean I would compile it with the rest of my code every time and I'm not interested in that.

This is mostly useful for me for libraries for which there is not much documentation available.

I was looking for how to do this in Visual Studio and had no luck so far.

Has anybody been interested in something like this before and solved it ? Maybe I just have the wrong approach.

Thanks,

Upvotes: 3

Views: 142

Answers (2)

Hans Passant
Hans Passant

Reputation: 942000

Yes, large portions of the source code of the .NET Framework are available as the Reference Source. Search MSFT for this, basic troubleshooting help is available in this page. Access to the unpublished parts is available through Redgate's Reflector Pro product.

Upvotes: 1

richard
richard

Reputation: 12526

I think the best you can do is use Reflector to see the source code in your language of choice. . .

By the way, it looks like with the Pro version, you can actually step into the assemblies code when debugging.

Wikipedia - .NET Reflector

Reflector Home Page

Upvotes: 0

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