[This material was first submitted to aspngvs@ls.asplists.com]
Note: This outline assumes that on your machine you have installed Windows 2000, Visual Studio 6 (with Service Pack 4) followed by an installation of Visual Studio .NET 7 Beta 1.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Something that works in my environment:
I still have some problems debugging vb.net Web Applications. The naïve
approach results in a vs7 beta 1 error message: "Unable to automatically
attach to http://localhost/../default.aspx ... Make sure you are a member
of the 'Debugger Users' group on the server ..."
(I and everyone else I know is already a member of 'Debugger Users'!)
The problem is compounded by the presently incomplete state of the documentation. I found one helpful page in MSDN VS.NET: "Considerations in Debugging Different Project Types".
On my system the following work-around can be used to by-hand force vs7 beta 1 to debug a vb.net Web Application project.
1. Build the solution that contains the Web App project.
2. Make
sure your Config.web file specifies <compilation
debugmode="true"/>.
3. CLOSE the solution. This step may not be required but beta1 is slow and doing this seems to both speed-up debugging and provide a simpler environment. In the following steps you may find it necessary to do some "tweaking" on your system.
4. Debugging on a single machine the client process is IExplore.exe, the server process is xspwp.exe . You must attach to xspwp.exe and may need to attach to IExplore.exe .
5. Attaching
to xspwp.exe :
From the vs7 debug menu:
- select 'processes'.
- check 'show system processes'
- highlight xspwp.exe and click
'Attach...'
- IMPORTANT: in the 'attach to
process' dialog un-check all program types except 'common language runtime' then
click 'Ok' ( I think there is another bug there.)
- since xspwp.exe is a system process, back in the processes dialog it might be
a good idea to select "Detach from this process" in the 'when
debugging is stopped' combo.
6. Attaching
to IExpore.exe:
- Sometimes IExplore.exe shows in the Processes dialog with Transport: set at
"Default". Sometimes
IExplore.exe is running, but doesnt show: i dont know why (does anyone know
why?). If you see it you may do a straight-forward attach to it.
- If Transport: set at "Default" does not show IExplore.exe:
from your desktop Start menu run msvcmon.exe ("C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Visual Studio.NET\Common7\Tools\Remote Debugger\msvcmon.exe"), change
'Transport:' to TCP/IP, 'Port:' to the IP address of your machine and you should
now see IExplore.exe in the 'Avalable Processes' list. Do a straight-forward
attach to it.
7. Close the Processes dialog.
8. In vs7
(for example) open the Default.vb file associated with your
Default.aspx (I renamed WebForm1.aspx to Default.aspx, just to ensure I was not
missing something) and set a breakpoint in Sub WebForm1_Load(). Point
IExpore.exe to the url for your Default.aspx page, (for example: http:/localhost/Xxxx/Default.aspx)
and 'Refresh' IExplore.exe. Your breakpoint should catch!
Rafael Pena
rpenaphd@worldnet.att.net
1/20/2001
Keywords: HowTo,
Walkthrough