How can I debug a SharePoint EventReceiver with Remote Debugger?

Question

Hi!

I have written an SharePoint EventReceiver (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0) and want to debug it with Visual Studio 2008 SP1, which runs on a different computer. I have tried the following steps:

• Installing the event receiver (I know that this works because a log file proves that the code is executed).
• Registering my event receiver class library in the GAC of the SharePoint server (built in Debug mode).
• Starting Visual Studio Remote Debugging Monitor on SharePoint server.
• Attaching to process w3wp.exe on SharePoint server from local machine.

Unfortunately Visual Studio tells me that the breakpoint I set will not be hit. I guess that when installing the assembly to the GAC the debug symbols (or whatever is needed for debugging) are lost.

What can I do to debug my event receiver? As far as I know the only way to extend SharePoint by custom assemblies is to deploy them to GAC - am I missing here something?

Best Regards
Oliver Hanappi

Answer 1

you could try manually copying your assembly's debug (.pdb) file to the c:\windows\assembly\MSIL\ASSEMBLYNAME\VERSION folder on the target machine and restart IIS.