Ok. With that last post , I believe I've completely caught up with all outstanding private emails requests. If you sent me a private email via the contact link on this blog, and none of my recent posts answer it, then odds are a) the spam filters ate...

From the mailbag: Just wanted to know if there are plans to ever give us world citizens an API to modify & emit pdb files, at least for managed assemblies. Good news. You've already got them. 1) The CorSym.idl API (exists in sdk, next to where you...

There's a key distinction between a platform (like the CLR debugging services) enabling a scenario instead of actually implementing the scenario. Implementing a scenario means we provide specific functionality for a scenario. For example, the CLR debugging...

Calls to Debugger.Log in a debuggee can generate a ICorDebugManagedCallback::LogMessage managed debug event. This is the managed equivalent of kernel32!OutputDebugString . Other managed functions (like Debug.Write ) may degenerate to calls to Debugger...

Several people have written me to say that they're writing their own language (let's say 'X') and they compile their language to C# and then compile C# to IL. This is instead of directly compiling X to IL. This can be attractive because: 1) using C# constructs...

One of the things I like about C# anonymous delegates is that the codegen is clever enough that they're reasonably debuggable without any additional debugger support. This type of debugger-friendly codegen is a key part in making your 3rd-party language...

Customers have alerted us that the MDBg sample is broken on post-beta 2 builds. Rick Byers has diagnosed the problem as an issue in the mdbg build and we're working to update it. I guess there was a VS change that exposed this problem. Rick may blog a...

In VS, F5 will launch your application under the debugger. Under the debugger, you'll hit breakpoints, be able to edit-and-continue, and do all the debugger things you know and love. Ctrl+F5 will launch your application outside of the debugger...

From the mail bag: Is there a way to determine if a managed debugger is already attached to a given process id? It looks like ICorDebug.CanLaunchOrAttach might be the right API for this (wouldn't it return FALSE if another debugger is...

Question from the mail bag: I am trying to get some information on what I can do usefully with the "+ 0xnn" part at the end of a call stack line in VS IDE 2003. So when I see (in the call stack window) cf-gfmaa!Microsoft.Xml.Serialization.GeneratedAssembly...

ICorDebug (ICD) in managed-only debugging mode does not need to be a reentrant API . In other words, you can imagine all of ICorDebug being under a single giant monitor (lock). This also means that all calls to ICorDebug will return without blocking on...

ICorDebug (ICD) is a com-classic interface. In terms of COM threading models , ICorDebug is technically free-threaded (aka, should reside in the "neutral apartment"), which means that it manages its own threading. We go through great pains in the ICD...

We've had some design discussions where we've come across 4 types of string names. These terms came mostly from discussing debugging symbols, but they extend to naming in general. Type Example for function Example for filename ...

Interop-debugging splits all debug events into "In-band (IB) " and "Out-of-band (OOB)". Inband events are the good ones: at an inband event, the debuggee is stopped and you can use the rest of the ICorDebug API normally to do inspection and other things...

Sometimes a good example can instantly clarify something. I recall back to my early school days when my math teacher explained that addition and multiplication were Commutative (a+b == b+a) and Associative ( a+(b+c) == (a+b) +c). We students didn't...

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...