Visual Studio for a Java Developer

Question

This is probably a silly question but here goes: I like to be able to see the source code of third party (OSS) libraries from within my projects. I always setup my projects like this when using java. Is this possible in Visual Studio? I am not interested in building them! Only have them available for reference if lets say an exception stack trace points to a third party component...

Answer 1

Debugging a third-party DLL in Visual Studio.NET? covers much of the details if you're trying to do this for debugging purposes. But in general, two points to take away. First, it's unfortunately a little bit harder than it would be in Java. Second, it depends heavily on what language you're using.

Essentially, you do the following if it's a .NET assembly you're working against.

• Decompile the source code with something like Reflector, then treat the decompiled source code as a new library within your project and set breakpoints in the source.

• Remove all references to the 3rd party library so that it is the decompiled code that is executing.

• Don't forget to remove references to the source elements later.

If it's an existing open-source library, you can just compile the source yourself into program database (PDB) files, assuming there's a corresponding VS project. More on that here.

Answer 2

To achieve this you have to have pdb files. If library is provided with debug symbol file you have to place pdb file in the same location that dll. During debug VS will ask you about location of source files.

You can read about it here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241613.aspx

The problem you will get if library is provided without pdb. If it is OSS dll you can compile it by yourself with pdb files. You will have to do it once.