Debug NuGet package with Azure Devops and Source Link

I wrote a complete blog on how to do this using .NET Core & AzureDevops, but the steps should work for .NET Standard projects as well.

That said, some key takeaways that are missing from Microsofts documentation that you should know are:

  • The project's debugging information needs to change from "Portable" to "Full"
  • The AzureDevOps Nuget(restore, build, pack & push) need to use the .NET Core task.
  • The .NET Core build task should have an argument "--configuration" that passes in the value "debug". Doing so generates the .PDB file
  • The .NET Core pack task should use the "custom" command, with the custom command being "pack" and have the following arguments: "--include-symbols -v d" and a "-c" that passes in the value "debug". Doing so tells the pack command to include the .PDB file in the package.

Question 1: Does Source Link support .NET Standard packages?

Yes. I successfully built a .NET Standard 2.0 library on Azure DevOps Pipeline, after which it was pushed to our private Azure DevOps Artifacts NuGet feed. Then, in a local project, I was able to step into the library (Visual Studio prompted me with a pop-up about downloading remote source code).

Here are the changes I had to make in the library's .csproj file:

<PropertyGroup>
  <PublishRepositoryUrl>true</PublishRepositoryUrl>
  <EmbedUntrackedSources>true</EmbedUntrackedSources>
  <AllowedOutputExtensionsInPackageBuildOutputFolder>
    $(AllowedOutputExtensionsInPackageBuildOutputFolder);.pdb
  </AllowedOutputExtensionsInPackageBuildOutputFolder>
</PropertyGroup>
...
<ItemGroup>
  <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.SourceLink.GitHub" Version="1.0.0-beta-63127-02" PrivateAssets="All"/>
</ItemGroup>

Question 2: is that [PackageReference to Microsoft.SourceLink.GitHub] necessary?

I'm not sure. The docs suggest it is. But I removed the reference, re-built on Azure DevOps, and was still able to step through the library. Perhaps it's necessary for different environments (I'm keeping it just in case).

FWIW:

  • I'm debugging using Visual Studio 15.8.9
  • My latest installed .NET Core SDK is 2.1.403
  • My library's consumer is a .NET Core 2.1 executable
  • I compiled my library using Cake, which I have call into dotnet msbuild

Tags:

Azure Devops

Sourcelink

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