Debugging Visual D using Visual D

[Rainer Schuetze via Digitalmars-d-debugger]

On 13.08.2017 23:14, Johnson Jones wrote:
> So, just to let you know, I seemed to be able to setup Visual Studio so 
> that I can debug Visual D(with visual D).
> 
> To do this:
> 
> Load the experimental hive:
> 
> https://blog.agchapman.com/updating-registry-settings-for-visual-studio-2017/ 
> 
> 
> Load the privateregistry.bin file from 
> %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_[instanceid]{RootSuffix}\privateregistry.bin 
> 
> 
> 
> Modify all visual D install dirs with a location one wants to use for 
> the debugged version, there are quite a few. I simply made a sub-dir 
> called debug and copied the original data to that location(and, of 
> course, made a backup).
> 
> Create a way to copy the debug version of visual D to that directory(a 
> build event, batch file, etc).
> 
> Then run visual studio with /RootSuffix Exp
> 
> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb166560.aspx
> 
> It should load a new exp visual studio using the new visual D. Now one 
> can copy the dll without issue since they are different versions being 
> used.

Thanks for figuring this out.

Maybe this can be automated with a combination of a registry import file 
prepared from the extensions' visuald.pkgdef and loading/unloading the 
private VS registry via "reg load/unload".

> 
> The only thing left to do is have it automatically run visual studio on 
> "start". There seems to be no csproj for visualD though so it can't be 
> modified, I guess a post build event could be used.
> 

I set Visual D as the startup project and "<VSPath>\devenv.exe" as the 
target executable to debug for this project.

> Also, it seems that one can't disable building for a project. Visual D 
> has several projects and I'm so used to building using F6 that I tend to 
> rebuild the whole thing. Is it possible to get some way to disable 
> building for a project in the solution?
> 

I just use "Build startup project" to build. Building the whole solution 
is ok with C#, but usually no good with larger C++ or D projects.