VSCode No Symbols Loaded for Full .NET Debugging With IIS

[dforsyth-iit]

Environment data

dotnet --info output:
`.NET Command Line Tools (2.1.101)

Product Information:
Version: 2.1.101
Commit SHA-1 hash: 6c22303bf0

Runtime Environment:
OS Name: Windows
OS Version: 10.0.16299
OS Platform: Windows
RID: win10-x64
Base Path: C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.1.101\

Microsoft .NET Core Shared Framework Host

Version : 2.0.6
Build : 74b1c703813c8910df5b96f304b0f2b78cdf194d`

VS Code version: 1.21.1
C# Extension version: 1.14.0

Steps to reproduce

Using the following launch.json:
{ // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible attributes. // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes. // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387 "version": "0.2.0", "configurations": [ { "name": ".NET Attach", "type": "clr", "request": "attach", "processName": "w3wp" } ] }

And attaching to an already running IIS process, the same as I would do for full Visual Studio.

Expected behavior

Can step through and debug as with full Visual Studio

Actual behavior

No breakpoints are active, and they all say "Unverified breakpoint, No symbols have been loaded for this document."

In the debug console, I get messages saying it's skipping loading symbols for all the standard .NET libraries, but I can't find any of my libraries in the output.

[dforsyth-iit]

I have also tried adding:

"symbolPath": [ "${workspaceRoot}/../../bin" ]

To the launch.json

[dforsyth-iit]

I've done some more digging and it looks like it's trying to use the .NET core debugger, so it's failing to load full .NET symbols.

WARNING: Could not load symbols for 'MyLibrary.dll'. 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root\46b682b8\ce6702c4\assembly\dl3\56675e51\8784d879_33c2d301\MyLibrary.pdb' is a Windows PDB. These are not supported by the cross-platform .NET Core debugger.

My understanding was that this plugin supported the full .NET Framework. Is this not the case for my version?

[gregg-miskelly]

No, it does have limited support for .NET full framework, but you are running into one of the two big limitations that the article you pointed to lists - this extension only supports portable PDBs.

You can configuration your project to build portable PDBs: https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode/wiki/Portable-PDBs#csproj

[dforsyth-iit]

Thanks for the reply! If I replace <DebugType>full</DebugType> with <DebugType>portable</DebugType>, my project fails to build with the message CSC : error CS1902: Invalid option 'portable' for /debug; must be full or pdbonly. Any suggestions?

[gregg-miskelly]

This means you are using a C# compiler that is too old. Anything from the last ~2 years will 'portable' debug type. Where are you getting your C# compiler from?

[dforsyth-iit]

I'm using the msbuild command msbuild /t:Build /p:VisualStudioVersion=14.0 /p:Configuration=Debug. I assume it's got something to do with the VisualStudioVersion parameter, but I can't get it to compile with version 15. Is there a built in way to build csproj files in vscode?

[gregg-miskelly]

Sorry, what I mean is - where are you getting msbuild from? (ex: did you install some version of full Visual Studio).

The options that I am aware of:

• You can install full VS - https://www.visualstudio.com/
• I haven't done this personally, but I believe you could install the VS 2017 Build Tools - https://www.visualstudio.com/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=BuildTools&rel=15
• You can use the compilers from a NuGet package - https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Net.Compilers/

The one downside of the last one is that the compilers will run a bit slower as they will not get pre-compiled to native code.

VS Code is a loosely-coupled tool. So you can configure the build task to do anything you want. If you have the VS 2017 build tools installed (1 or 2 from above), I think probably the easiest way to way to use the VS 2017 msbuild would be to either open VS Code from within a VS 2017 developer prompt, or set your build command that runs a batch script that runs the developer command prompt setup script (<VS-Install-Dir>\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat) followed by running msbuild on your project.

[dforsyth-iit]

Oh, sorry. I have Visual Studio 2017 installed, and I assume all the C# compiler stuff along with it. I thought I would already be using the latest C# compiler with that?

[gregg-miskelly]

In that case, try this --

1. From the Windows Start menu, open a Developer Command Prompt for VS 2017
2. cd to the directory of your project
3. code . to open up VS Code (assuming you picked the default option of adding VS Code to your path, if not, you will need to add the path to VS Code here)
4. From here try your build

The issue is that in VS 2017, VS made changes so that you can install multiple instances, and way less stuff installs in a way that it changes the global state of your machine. So you are likely getting an older version of msbuild if you aren't running from within the developer command prompt.

[dforsyth-iit]

Okay, that makes sense. Is there a way to update the system version of msbuild to the latest one? I don't want to have to open VSCode from a VS2017 developer prompt every time.

[gregg-miskelly]

You are reaching the limits of my expertise. If you open a command prompt, do set PATH="<VS-InstallRoot>\MSBuild\15.0\Bin";%PATH%, and then run msbuild. Does that work? If so you could update your system environment to include that directory.

Another option would be to setup your build task in tasks.json to run a batch script (instead of directly executing msbuild), and from that batch script you can run VsDevCmd.bat before invoking msbuild.

[dforsyth-iit]

That specific command didn't work, but I tracked down where my msbuild 15 version was installed (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\BuildTools\MSBuild\15.0\Bin) and added that to my path. Restarted VSCode, and everything is building and debugging great. Thanks so much for your help Gregg!