Command line based debugger for C# running on .NET 6

[awa5114]

Crossposting from SE
Crossposting from Roslyn discussions

I'm on a (possibly futile) quest to find a command line based debugger for C# applications running on the .NET 6 framework. Something similar to jdb for java or pdb for python. I'm on a windows machine. Here are the meagre resources I have found:

• debugging c# in the command line
• MDbg
• DebugExe flag for devenv

The most promising by far would have been MDbg, but this looks very much outdated. The page on the NuGet repository shows no version compatible with .NET 6.

I also made a post on reddit but this unfortunately did not generate much discussion or answers.

Being able to hop into the debugger from the command line is a common feature among several languages, so I feel like it should exist for C#, however convoluted the process may be.

Is there any way to do this in C#?

[alexrp]

I believe Samsung's NetCoreDbg has a CLI and runs on Windows: https://github.com/Samsung/netcoredbg

I haven't used it so I can't say much beyond that.

[awa5114]

@PathogenDavid I got it to work. Thanks.

[awa5114]

It looks like the CLI for netcoredbg is broken. I tried it for a simple console app and the developers confirmed that it didn't work. Samsung/netcoredbg#92

[danmoseley]

Cc @tommcdon

[tommcdon]

One quick note - there are no known API changes that would break backwards compatibility for debuggers; however, dbgshim.dll has been moved from the dotnet/runtime repo in .net 7 to dotnet/diagnostics. Please see #67725, dotnet/diagnostics#2842, and dotnet/diagnostics#3088. Dbgshim packages can be downloaded from https://github.com/dotnet/diagnostics/releases/tag/v6.0.328102 or from nuget.org. The package names are https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Diagnostics.DbgShim.linux-<arch>. It's possible netcoredbg has a dependency on dbgshim and so copying the dbgshim module from the appropriate nuget package to the runtime install directory might resolve the issue.

[awa5114]

CC @viewizard please see comment above by @tommcdon regarding windows compatibility for netcoredbg