Can't debug into GAX NuGet packages

[jskeet]

Our .nupkg files contain pdbs, but for some reason I'm not able to step into them in the debugger.
It's possible this is just with local package sources, but we should investigate.

[jskeet]

Sample .NET 6 console app - I can't step into RetrySettings.FromConstantBackoff:

using Google.Api.Gax.Grpc;

var ts = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1);
Predicate<Exception> predicate = ex => false;
var settings = RetrySettings.FromConstantBackoff(10, ts, predicate);
var backoff = settings.NextBackoff(TimeSpan.Zero);

Will investigate other packages we (or I) publish (which may have different settings). Packages to check:

• NodaTime
• GAPIC libraries
• REST support libraries
• REST generated libraries
• Functions Framework
• Event type library (Google.Events.Protobuf)
• Protobuf

[jskeet]

Interestingly, SourceLink does work when hitting F12 with the cursor on "FromConstantBackoff".

Just tested Noda Time as well with Instant instant = Instant.FromUtc(2022, 9, 16, 0, 0); - same behavior. The debugger just steps over the code. (I have "Just my code" unchecked in the debugging options.)

[jskeet]

I can step into Json.NET code. But not:

• Google.Protobuf
• CloudNative.CloudEvents
• Google.Api.Gax.Grpc
• Google.Apis.Auth
• Google.Apis.Storage.v1
• Google.Cloud.Functions.V2
• NodaTime

Hmm.

[jskeet]

It's possible that this is due to not using Portable PDB files. See https://endjin.com/blog/2022/05/debugging-nuget-packages-understanding-debugging-symbols-and-using-source-link

[jskeet]

I've tried publishing with portable PDBs (JonSkeet.DemoUtil) - no joy. It's really unclear to me what's going on here.

[jskeet]

Aha - I think the problem is that dotnet build doesn't copy the pdb files into the output directory, and doesn't look for them from the package cache.

I suspect all of this is related to dotnet/sdk#1458, which looks like it enables a workaround via a new project property (CopyDebugSymbolFilesFromPackages=true) but only as of .NET SDK 7.0.100 RC2. I'm going to test that on my personal machine.

Assuming that doesn't become the default, we might want to consider publishing snupkg files instead, as it looks like that does already work out of the box.

[jskeet]

(Ah - 7.0 RC2 isn't out yet. Only 7.0 RC1 is available right now.)

[jskeet]

Publishing a snuget package, I can navigate to the code, but I still can't debug into it :(

[jskeet]

Retested with .NET 7 and VS 2022 version 17.4.1 - still broken by default.

But, importantly, setting CopyDebugSymbolFilesFromPackages to true does fix this. Hooray! I think we can just document this for now.

[jskeet]

Closing this now, as we've documented it in https://cloud.google.com/dotnet/docs/reference/help/troubleshooting#how-can-i-debug-into-the-libraries