Within a function, offset 0 into the native code stream corresponds to the very first native instruction in that function. Since the function is ultimately executed via native code (and not via interpreted IL), it's safe to say that native offset 0 corresponds...

When MC++ compiles an "unmanaged" class into IL (from IJW), it actually compiles the class into an opaque blob and then uses pointer arithmetic to access the fields. The code is not verifiable, but it's still IL. This is exactly how it would codegen if...

Managed C++ (MC++) code generation is a cool accomplishment. I think it's another good testimony to the CLR's cross-language charter (and IL's flexibility) that we can support C++. (Not too mention our support for more dynamic languages like F# , SML...

Sometimes I'm debugging and I want to make sure that I'm actually interop-debugging and not accidentally managed-only debugging. (Now that interop-debugging is so much faster and more stable in whidbey, it's easy to forget you're doing it). One way...

Here's an sampling of various goofy bugs we've had to deal with in the CLR Debugging services over the past. I mention these so that you can consider whether most of the hot "silver-bullet" testing / software development technique would ever catch bugs...

Previously , I added IronPython scripting support to a real existing application, MDbg (a managed debugger written in C#). In this entry, I'll go through step-by-step how I did that. I'll call specific attention to the goofy issues so that it should be...

I hear IronPython is a great managed scripting language to embed in other managed apps, so I thought I'd try this out by writing an MDbg Extension to drop IronPython 0.9.1 into the MDBg Beta 2 sample. (both pieces are publicly available downloads). The...

In Writing Solid Code , Steve Maguire warns to "fortify your subsystems". This is especially important if your subsystem takes liabilities on other systems. One of our (CLR debugging teams') most common bugs from Whidbey Beta 2 is a case where we hadn...

At this point, I've got what seems to be an endlessly long list of things I'd like to eventually blog about. My list includes: ( Update 10/25/05 : added more hyperlinks since I've now down some of these) 1.) Brushing up on some AI: A coworker lent me...

Some of you are probably wondering why I sometimes blog on such strange topics. Great question! There are lots of reasons: 1.) My area of expertise (ie, the only thing I know more than you about) is the CLR Debugging Services. Based off blog comments...

I wrote some C# sample code to get an ISymbolReader from a managed PDB (Program Database) file and then dump it back out as XML. The managed PDB stores all the source-level debugging information such as: - the mapping between IL offsets and source lines...

We added Just-My-Code (JMC) stepping (the ability to step through just your code and skip code that's not yours) in Whidbey. I blogged a demo from the end-user's perspective here . In response to some email, I wanted to talk a little more about how a...

Ever wonder how large Visual Studio is? This public comment from the MSDN feedback gives some good stats: Visual Studio is over 43 million lines of code , there are over 30 teams working on different pieces, with roughly 700 developers checking-in...

Here's my sample code for a tool to catch blog plagiarism that I described earlier . In retrospect, it was pretty easy to write (under 400 lines!). And edit-and-continue in C# and interceptable exceptions made my development time a lot faster! The...

The clipboard can be a very handy source of input for certain console tools. I've written some console C# tools that want to take in a large amount of text from some open document (such as a webpage or a window in my IDE). It would be annoying to have...

For kicks, I started writing a tool to use internet searches to automatically catch plagiarism . The first thing I needed was a way to easily execute a search (I'll use MSN search ) from a C# API. Ideally, it would be a function that takes in a search...

If you copy somebody else's blog entry verbatim, credit the original author and link back to the original post. Sometimes I'll google my own topics to learn more about what other people have to say about it. I stumbled across some blatant plagiarism...

I embarrassed to admit I hadn't used CSS before. I googled it, this tutorial came up, I found it quick and helpful, so I wanted to pass it along. It's a great, concise, easy-to-follow, tutorial about why the <font> tag in HTML is bad and how to...

Native-only debugging allows you to debug child processes. In other words, you can debug process A, and then if A spawns process B, your debugger can automatically start debugging process B. This eliminates the need to manually attach to process B, and...

Soma (my boss's boss's boss's boss) recently blogged about how the CLR took a major change to fix Nullable . There are 2 lessons here. First, this is a lesson in super-stars. Some background: this was a major change done very late in the game. That's...

I've heard several different opinions about how the debugger should display a generic method in the callstack. Say you have a method Class<T>::Method<S>(...). Say you have 3 instances, of with (T=int, S=string), (T=int, S=object), and (T=float...

C#'s yield keyword is sure neat, but I notice it only lets you yield a single item. It does not let you yield another enumerator and then flatten for you. You can manually do this by having the for-each yourself. foreach(int i in GetValues()) { yield...

The Mdbg (a managed debugging written in pure C#) sample, which includes full source, has now been updated and released. The previous sample was for beta 1. This new sample has been updated for Whidbey beta 2 and will also be compatible with the final...

From the mailbag: "I notice that running and attaching the debugger takes on average now 8-10 seconds for even a simple console application." I'm not a VS expert, but here are some trouble-shooting tips: 1. Try a managed-only attach instead of interop...

You can't get a full-mixed (both managed+ native) stack of a thread within your own process. You can get a native-only stack from function like DbgHelp!StackWalk64 (which is what this article on Codeproject does) to get the native callstack of a native...