Debugging Through different solutions in Visual Studio

Question

Currently I have solution A that contains a domain layer base and solution B that references the binaries from solution A. Is there a way to debug straight through from one to the other with two instances of visual studio open (one for each solution). I've read that you can just add the existing projects from solution A to solution B. Is there any other solution that works? I've tried directly attaching solution A to what the running executable in solution B but it won't let me attach multiple debuggers to the same app.

I should note that when I step into a piece of it automatically brings up the code from solution A within solution B's instance of Visual studio to debug in. I suppose this is acceptable, but you can't just set arbitrary breakpoints and wait for the code to hit them this way.

Thanks

Answer 1

What if you explicitly load the symbols from Solution A?

If you go to Tools->Options->Debugging->Symbols you can point it at the .pdb file from Solution A.

Then you can see if the symbols are loaded from your binaries by going to Debug->Windows->Modules while debugging.

Answer 2

You can only have one debugger debugging a process at once. So that means you only need one instance of Visual Studio open.

However, you can just open the .cpp/.cs/whatever file from Solution B into Solution A's copy of Visual Studio and set breakpoints. It'll still work even though those files aren't actually part of the solution.

Answer 3

There is no way to have 2 instances of Visual Studio debugging the same process. This is a limitation of Windows, and most other operating systems in that at most one process can be debugging another.

It is a perfectly supported scenario though to debug binaries that are not a part of your solution. As you've noted you can happily step into binaries from Solution B while debugging from a Solution A.

One item that will get in the way here though is the Debugging feature named "Just My Code". This is a feature aimed at minimizing the debugging experience to just the code in your solution. Great for normal solutions but bad when you're debugging arbitrary binaries. It's likely causing a lot of the problems around break points you're seeing. You'll want to disable it by doing the following

• Tools -> Options -> Debugging
• Unchecked "Enable Just My Code"