Power Debugging with Visual Studio .NET

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Power Debugging with Visual Studio .NET

• Andy Pennell
• Development Lead
• Visual Studio Debugger
• Microsoft Corporation

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Contents

• 6.0 Issues
• Why Switch to 7.0
• New 7.0 UI
• Remote Debugging
• Debugger Automation
• Minidumps
• Runtime Checks
• More New Stuff
• Undocumented Goodies

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Microsoft .NET

• Visual C .NET has a great many new features
  for the native code developer (despite the name)
• No more references to .NET (I promise)

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What Sucked in the 6.0 Debugger

• Remote Debugging
• Painful to set up, not very reliable
• Additional DLLs
• Painful to set up, remote was even more so
• Modal Threads Dialog
• Multi-threaded apps painful to debug
• Debugging STL code
• 255 char limit in debug information

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Why Switch to 7.0 Debugger

• You dont have to switch to 7.0 compiler/libs/crt
  for 7.0 debugger
• Changing your toolset is a bigger decision
• One IDE for everything
• C / C / C / VB / ASP / VBS / SQL etc
• New UI
• Tab-dock everything
• Simple Remote Debugging
• Debug Multiple Processes

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Why Switch (continued)

• Rich Automation Support
• Read and Write Minidumps
• No 255 char limit on debug info
• Debugging STL suddenly feasible
• Requires 7.0 toolset
• Runtime Checks
• More Good Stuff

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New 7.0 UI

• Demo
• New Debugger windows
• Four memory windows
• Threads/Breakpoints/Modules modeless
• Command Window
• Processes window
• Almost everything is modeless can be tab-docked
  with anything
• e.g. see Threads with Stack
• Wheel and Multi-Mon friendly

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Remote Debugging

• Particularly important for DirectX and earlier
  versions of Windows
• Pretty painful in 6.0
• Additional DLLs
• Not completely reliable
• Hidden in docs
• Additional DLLs is Dead
• For local too
• Breakpoints re-bind when a DLL loads
• As reliable as the network permits

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Remote Debugging 2

• Use Transport TCP/IP
• See Remote Debug Setup docs
• Change Project Properties
• Right click on Project / Properties
• Go to Configuration Properties / Debugging
• Debugger Type Native Only
• Connection Remote via TCP/IP (Native)
• Remote Machine pingable name
• Remote Command path to exe as remote machine
  sees it

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Remote Debugging 3

• Start MSVCMon on remote machine
• Press F5 on IDE
• Thats it!
• Recommend you share the .exe from your IDE box to
  the Target box
• New Debug gt1 remote process
• New Remote Attach

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Debugger Automation

• Rich API set
• Threw out 6.0 automation APIs
• Write macros to control debugger
• Write event handlers
• e.g. to react to breakpoints
• Demo

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Lots of Registers Now

• Reg window supports groups, x86
• CPU
• CPU Segments
• Floating point
• MMX
• SSE1
• SSE2
• 3DNow!
• Flags
• Effective Address

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Minidumps

• A (small) file that captures the state of a
  process
• You can save nasty crashes for later
  investigation
• Your QA can do the same
• Customers can send you the crash info for
  off-line tracking and investigation
• Latest Microsoft software uses minidumps to
  report crashes direct to microsoft.com (and send
  fixes back to you)

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Minidumps 2

• Create with
• Visual Studio Debugger (Debug / Save As Dump )
• Windows XP, Office XP, Internet Explorer,
  VisualStudio (automatically via Watson)
• YourApp.exe
• See MSDN MiniDumpWriteDump
• Read With Visual C 7 Debugger
• Open Solution / Foo.mdmp

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Runtime Checks

• New compiler option to find bugs earlier
• cl /RTC1 finds
• Buffer overruns
• Calling convention mismatches
• Using uninitialized locals
• Debugger understands them
• Use in debug builds only
• See run-time error checks in docs

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DirectX Data Display

• Add to autoexp.dat file
• D3DXQUATERNION xltxgt yltygt zltzgt wltwgt
• _D3DMATRIX _11lt_11gt _22lt_22gt _33lt_33gt
  _44lt_44gt
• D3DXVECTOR4 xltxgt yltygt zltzgt wltwgt
• _D3DVECTOR xltxgt yltygt zltzgt
• D3DXVECTOR2 xltxgt yltygt
• _D3DCOLORVALUE rltrgt gltggt bltbgt altagt
• _D3DPRESENT_PARAMETERS_ hwndlthDeviceWindowgt
  FmtltBackBufferFormatgt ZBuffltEnableAutoDepthStenc
  ilgt
• _D3DDISPLAYMODE wltWidthgt hltHeightgt
  HzltRefreshRategt FmtltFormatgt
• _D3DVIEWPORT8 xltxgt yltygt widthltWidthgt
  heightltHeightgt
• (Works in Visual C 6.0 too)

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More New Stuff

• Detach from processes
• On Windows XP uses new API
• On Windows 2000 uses Debugger Proxy Service
• Reload Symbols
• C Exceptions support
• Stop on them by name
• F5 can Attach (as well as Launch)
• Step Into Specific
• Smarter Tooltips (e.g. structs)

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Even More New Stuff

• (these all require 7.0 compiler)
• Tooltips on HRESULTs
• Full bool type support
• Full wchar_t type support
• Improved Edit Continue
• More changes allowed
• Edit code in .libs

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Undocumented Goodies

• Caveats may not work 100 or exist in future
  versions and Not Supported
• New Pseudo-Registers
• handles how may handles open
• NT OSes only
• vframe virtual frame pointer
• very handy for retail debugging
• Symbol Server
• See NT debugger docs for setup
• Use symsrvsymsrv.dll\\server\share

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SetThreadName

• typedef struct tagTHREADNAME_INFO
• DWORD dwType // must be 0x1000
• LPCSTR szName // pointer to name (in user addr
  space)
• DWORD dwThreadID // thread ID (-1caller
  thread)
• DWORD dwFlags // reserved for future use, must
  be zero
• THREADNAME_INFO
• void SetThreadName( DWORD dwThread, LPCSTR
  szThreadName, DWORD dwFlags )
• THREADNAME_INFO info
• info.dwType 0x1000
• info.szName szThreadName
• info.dwThreadID dwThread
• info.dwFlags dwFlags
• __try
• RaiseException( 0x406D1388, 0,
  sizeof(info)/sizeof(DWORD), (DWORD)info )

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Call To Action

• Switch to 7.0 Debugger Now
• Your life will be easier
• There are no excuses
• Switch to 7.0 Toolset Soon
• Better / faster / smaller codegen
• Better debugging (and Edit Continue)
• Better MFC/ATL/STL
• Timing depends on your project

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QA