How to debug/break in codedom compiled code

c# .net debugging code-generation
Jason Coyne picture Jason Coyne · May 18, 2009 · Viewed 9.6k times · Source

I have an application which loads up c# source files dynamically and runs them as plugins. When I am running the main application in debug mode, is it possible to debug into the dynamic assembly? Obviously setting breakpoints is problematic, since the source is not part of the original project, but should I be able to step into, or break on exceptions for the code?

Is there a way to get codedom to generate PDBs for this or something?

Here is the code I am using for dynamic compliation.

CSharpCodeProvider codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider(new Dictionary<string, string>() { { "CompilerVersion", "v3.5" } });
//codeProvider.
ICodeCompiler icc = codeProvider.CreateCompiler();

CompilerParameters parameters = new CompilerParameters();
parameters.GenerateExecutable = false;
parameters.GenerateInMemory = true;
parameters.CompilerOptions = string.Format("/lib:\"{0}\"", Application.StartupPath);
parameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.dll");
parameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Core.dll");


CompilerResults results = icc.CompileAssemblyFromSource(parameters, Source);
DLL.CreateInstance(t.FullName, false, BindingFlags.Default, null, new object[] { engine }, null, null);

Answer

bbmud picture bbmud · May 18, 2009

Try the following options:

parameters.GenerateInMemory = false; //default
parameters.TempFiles = new TempFileCollection(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("TEMP"), true);
parameters.IncludeDebugInformation = true;

I am not sure if this works OK in your case, but if it does, you can surround this parameters with conditional compilation directive, so that it dumps the generated assembly only in debug mode.

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