Hi,
I’ve found a nice article about debugging plugins in Visual Studio without the need to write/use a host application:
http://vvvv.org/tiki-index.php?page=Debug+vvvv+plugins+using+visual+studio+2005.
However, I followed the steps (except for “setup the Utils and PluginInterfaces references ‘copy local’ properties to ‘false’”), but the application doesn’t stop on my breakpoints after I dropped the dll on the patch. Visual Studio says that “no symbols were loaded for this page” when I hover the breakpoints.
My breakpoints are in the initialize, instantiate und pluginClass constructor methods. I used the dll in the VVVV plugins folder (output directory according to project settings). It’s a C++ project. Anything I might have forgotten?
It’s a C++ project.
I think no one tried to write C++ dlls and use them in vvvv via Plugin-Interface up to now. According to joreg there are certain difficulties when using other languages than C# (for more information you have to ask him)
And as far as I know vux´ tutorial applies to C# (only?!).
I’m not using the Plugin-Interface (written in C#) - I write freeframe plugins (in C++). I thought, the article is a general way of how to debug a dll loaded into another host application like VVVV. Was it a false assumption? Is there no way of debugging the C++ dll in another host app/process? Why should it be possible to attach debugger to a process if a C# dll is used by that process but not to attach the debugger to a process, if it uses a C++ dll? A managed/unmanaged problem?
@drjones: As you pointed, it is a managed/unmanaged problem, as the debugging symbols are different, and unmanaged code has direct access to memory, so debugging is a lot harder (should be possible, but never digged into it).
@joern: C++ plugins works via the plugin interface (made one), as long as it’s managed C++ (mixed mode works as well, won’t go in details on this as it would take pages :)
debugging tutorial should work for any managed language tho.