Experience with .NET Reflector Pro

Question

Hi,

do you have an experience with .NET Reflector Pro (not the free version)?

I searched for some way how to easy debug application in external enviroment (for example: production server out of office/developer domain) and I found feature "Step through decompiled assemblies and use all the debugging techniques you would use on your own code" in .NET Reflector Pro.

It looks so good, but I would like know the experience from people who are using it "every day".

Thanks

EDIT: For better explain: I would like use this feature for debuging the old versions of modular application (100+ modules in several versions) for hardly reproductable bugs which does not come in testing enviroment (for example: combination of data in DB and current configuration of server/client etc...).

There is way to rebuild specified assemblies (sometime there are dozens assemblies required) and add some issue-specific loging information. But it takes big time instead of debug concrete way and look to internal "things" such as local variables, fields, threads etc...

Answer 1

Hi, on the link you posted it is written this "NET Reflector Pro is an add-in to Visual Studio that lets you debug third-party code and assemblies, even if you don't have the source." So you can use it only on development machine because i doubt the user has visual studio.

Answer 2

It does look pretty cool, but I doubt that it will be useful very often.

Most of the time the bug is probably in my own code for which I have source, PDBs and the lot, so I don't need Reflector for that. With the option to debug Microsoft framework code I don't need Reflector Pro for that either. So the use case for Reflector Pro seems to be debugging third party libraries. Obviously these will be the source of some bugs from time to time and in those cases Reflector Pro may be worth its price.

However, the "only" thing it adds is the ability to seamlessly debug these. You can still look at the code with the plain vanilla edition of Reflector. In my experience that is enough in most cases.

I admit that I could be wrong here, but my gut feeling is that the free edition will be enough for a lot of users. In any case, I am in no rush to pay $200 for that specific feature.

Answer 3

You might want to ask your questions on the forum that Red-Gate watches for the product: http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/viewforum.php?f=85