Debugging windows mobile DLLs attached to binaries stored in device ROM

Question

I'm currently working on a soft-input-panel for windows mobile and have run into a bit of a snag. The compiled DLL (once deployed) is loaded by devices.exe which is stored in the windows mobile device's ROM. This is causing quite a nightmare as Visual Studio 2008 refuses to see the devices.exe process (using attach to process) making it impossible to use the debugger. I am currently using log file output which although helpful is not nearly as useful a real-time debugging.

Google and MSDN have been of little help on this as everything I turn up involves basic DLL debugging (i.e. attach to parent process). Am I missing something somewhere?

Answer 1

It's been a little while, but it used to be that you couldn't debug stuff that runs in the context of device.exe using the Visual Studio debugger, because the stub that it communicates with also runs in the context of device.exe. The way you had to debug device drivers on a Windows CE device is using Platform Builder, and even then, you won't have a debug image of your target platform. You can use something like CEPC to get the basic logic of your driver correct, but it's all much more painful than it should be.

Answer 2

Have a look in this forum thread, someone suggests a workaround that might work for you.