Remotely debug extensions

If ArcGIS Server is not installed on the same machine as Visual Studio, you must install the Visual Studio remote debugging tool and adopt the remote debugging approach demonstrated by the following steps.

On the server machine

  1. Download and install the Visual Studio remote debugging tool on the machine where ArcGIS Server is installed. The download link for each version of the Visual Studio remote debugging tools can be found here.

  2. Go to Start menu > Expand the Visual Studio 2022 (or another version of the Visual Studio remote tool that you installed) folder. Run Remote Debugger as Administrator.

  3. The first time you start the remote debugger or before you have configured it, the Remote Debugging Configuration dialog box appears. Click the Configure remote debugging button.

    remotedebugging1
  4. When configuration is complete, the Remote Debugger window appears. The Remote Debugger Tools > Options window allows you to set a specific port for the connection and change the authentication mode. You can leave the options as default.

  5. The remote debugger is now waiting for a connection. Take note of the server name and port number shown in the following window for later use.

    remotedebugging2

    The remote debugger is set now. For more information about Visual Studio remote debugging, refer to Visual Studio Docs.

  6. Follow steps 3 through 6 in manually attach the Visual Studio debugger section, to get the PID of the service that the debugger will be attached to.

On the development machine

On the development machine where Visual Studio is installed, you can manually attach the debugger to the remote server where the extension is running. Once the remote debugger is set up on the server machine, follow these steps to attach the debugger to the service remotely:

  1. Run Visual Studio as Administrator and open the extension project.

  2. Click Debug > Attach to Process to open the Attach to Process dialog box.

    Under Connection target, enter the server name with the port number from step 5 on the server machine. Alternatively, you may also enter the remote machine's IP address with the port number, for example, “dev0007459:4022” or “10.44.4.123:4022”.

    Make sure Show processes from all users is checked.

    Now all the service instances are shown in ArcSOC.exe in the Attach to Process window. Choose the ArcSOC.exe process with an ID as the PID from step 6. Click Attach.

    remotedebugging3
  3. Click Attach again when the Attach Security Warning dialog box appears.

  4. Now the debugger is attached to the service process. You can perform certain service operations to trigger the breakpoints and step into the code as you normally would.

  5. If you would like to remotely debug theInit()method in the extension, you can follow the steps in Enable debugging of the extension's initialization phase to use ArcGIS Server Debug Settings.

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