How? Symbols & Source for the Decompiler Nuget Package

[christophwille]

Taking a private discussion between @siegfriedpammer and myself to the public forum.

What is today's suggested / accepted way of publishing pdb / source? symbolsource.org seems pretty much dead, and many modern environs expect debug symbols alongside the original dlls.

Links from the discussion:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/create-packages/symbol-packages
dotnet/roslyn#3
https://github.com/ctaggart/SourceLink

What does everyone use / do these days?

Edit: via SourceLink (end of readme.md) I saw this uservoice item https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-ide/suggestions/19107733-debugger-should-support-c-compiler-embed-optio with an answer dated Oct 20th (so very recent)

Edit 2: apparently others are discussing too npgsql/npgsql#1479

[m0sa]

<DebugType>embedded</DebugType> is the new hotness - bakes the portable pdb info into the dll. Needs .NET 4.7.1 or .2 IIRC to show stack traces, though.

[KirillOsenkov]

Yup, embedding the pdb into the dll is now supported. Also use SourceLink to map to the sources on Github. Also consider Nerdbank.GitVersioning to bake the Git Sha into the dlls.

[siegfriedpammer]

Tracking dotnet/roslyn#19127 ... are there any other issues that still need to be fixed before this works out of the box in VS?

[siegfriedpammer]

Just added the necessary fixes to our nuget pack process, to support the new source embedding into pdb.

We now push CI nupkgs to https://ci.appveyor.com/nuget/ilspy-masterfeed, which you can simply add to your package sources in VS.

Step by step walkthrough:
Important: This requires Visual Studio 2017 15.5 preview2 or later.

1. Add our package source in VS:
   

2. Open up manage packages, switch to the newly created package source and enable Include prerelease and install the package.
   

3. Disable Just My Code in Debugging settings, this is necessary because we are publishing dlls built in release mode.
   

4. Just step into the decompiler source code anytime you need:
   

If you want to add the same to your project, follow these links and add the required bits:

• Add IncludeSymbolsInPackage: https://github.com/icsharpcode/ILSpy/blob/master/ICSharpCode.Decompiler/ICSharpCode.Decompiler.csproj#L27
• Use DebugType: portable, otherwise source embedding is not supported: https://github.com/icsharpcode/ILSpy/blob/master/ICSharpCode.Decompiler/ICSharpCode.Decompiler.csproj#L33
• Currently MSBuild does not yet support EmbedSources as a property, thus enable the following workaround: https://github.com/icsharpcode/ILSpy/blob/master/ICSharpCode.Decompiler/ICSharpCode.Decompiler.csproj#L593

Now MSBuild should pass the correct flags to csc and invoke nuget pack properly.

[diverdan92]

The NuGet team is also looking into make this experience better. Feel free to join the discussion there: NuGet/Home#6104

[christophwille]

Milestone 3.0 intentionally removed - it is implemented, but via workarounds. We will keep this issue open to keep tracking the related issues. Will close once we can remove the workarounds.

[christophwille]

Also see NuGet/NuGet.Client#1971