Andy's observations as he continues to attempt to know all that is .NET...

Monday, May 14, 2007

Minimum Debugging tool set


 

This week I've been teaching DM's Effective .NET course, one theme that run through the course is the ability to debug applications in the field. The tools in your arsenal here are the obvious ones like perfmon, but also the native windows debugging. The native debugger can be used to take snap shots of the suspect process (dump's seems to get a giggle from a few students). You therefore need to put the debugger on the client's machine, the typical way to do this is to download the debugging tools for windows, this is a reasonable size once unzipped 37MB...This includes a graphical debugging a few other bits and bobs, whilst these tools are useful on a developers machine they are not needed to take a snapshot and therefore not relevant for anyone other than a developer. This prompted a question from a student as to what is the minimum set of files needed to take a dump from a users machine.

After a few trial and errors we came up with the following list of files


 

    tlist.exe

    dbgeng.dll

    dbghelp.dll

    adplus.vbs

    cdb.exe

This results in a 4.6 MB unzipped install for a client's machine; this is more of a reasonable size that could be included in all employees desktop configuration.


 


 


 

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Im a freelance consultant for .NET based technology. My last real job, was at Cisco System were I was a lead architect for Cisco's identity solutions. I arrived at Cisco via aquisition and prior to that worked in small startups. The startup culture is what appeals to me, and thats why I finally left Cisco after seven years.....I now filll my time through a combination of consultancy and teaching for Developmentor...and working on insane startups that nobody with an ounce of sense would look twice at...