CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netdebuggingremote-debugging
Ferdinando Santacroce
Ferdinando Santacroce

Reputation: 1077

What are my options for a small, remote debugger for C# apps as an alternative to Visual Studio?

Just a simple (maybe dumb) question: is there a simple small debugger tool I can use when I do remote-assistance (I use VNC or TeamViewer)?

My C# app is deployed to thousands customers in my country, and sometimes there was some errors I cannot simply reply. If there was a simple debugger, I would use it to test the particular installation and environment, and I would probably find the problem in minutes.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 1638

Answers (4)

Dan Puzey
Dan Puzey

Reputation: 34218

Without symbols and source files, you're not going to get very far. A debugger won't give you much useful information without those things, and for a large application that can be quite cumbersome.

A more likely useful solution is to implement some kind of log/dump collection so you can bring useful information back to your machine for analysis.

Alternatively, the VS remote debugger would allow you to attach the VS debugger via network to a remote machine, but this is quite painful to work with over a slow internet-type connection.

Upvotes: 1

Stuart
Stuart

Reputation: 66882

For 2.0, there is a core framework debugger - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7zxbks7z(VS.80).aspx - not something I've personally used since 1.1 of the framework!

It looks like in 4.0 there is this command line debugger - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd233107.aspx - and it looks like the source code for this is available - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=ce94e626-c43d-419c-8538-173f6a042ef5 - looks like an interesting project.

Upvotes: 2

user240141
user240141

Reputation:

You can use Redgates Reflector with Deblector. http://reflectoraddins.codeplex.com/. But we generally log our all unhandled exceptions to text file and whenever client approaches us we take out the log file. And release a new build with the issues fixed.

Upvotes: 3

Rob Levine
Rob Levine

Reputation: 41358

I can't think of a small alternative debugger that would let you step into running code in the way that Visual Studio does.

However, you can always create a dump file which will give you a snapshot of the entire process, with all threads and stack traces, etc. In more recent versions of Windows, this is as simple as right-clicking on the process in task manager and selecting "Create Dump File".

Once you have this, you bring it to your local dev box, run WinDbg with SOS and you can get a full view of what was going on.

Tess Ferrandez blogged some brilliant beginner's labs to get people started with this sort of thing.

Upvotes: 2

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