There are two windbg extentions that add support for managed code debugging.
- SOS. This is available on every machine that has .NET installed on it.
- PSSCOR2. Currently only available internally from //volleyball/tools/psscor
SOS.dll or PSSCOR2.dll have to be in the extension DLL search Path (run the .chain command to see the search paths and loaded debugger exentions).
I'll focus on PSSCOR2 as it has more functionality available.
To load the extention type:
.load psscor2
Here are a list of usful commands and what they do (use the !help, or !help <command_name> for more info):
- To list all the objects in the heap of type MyNameSpace.MyType, run the following command:
- !DumpHeap -type MyNameSpace.MyType
- To find the size of an object plus all the objects it has a direct or indirect reference to them, find the address of the object from the above command and then run:
- !ObjSize <object_address>
- To find more information about an object, use the following command (after finding the object address):
- !DumpObj <object_address>
- To get an overall statistic about the memory usage in the GC heap use:
- !DumpHeap -stat
- To findout why an object is still in the memory and not garbage collected, you can find its references using the following command (after ifnding the object address):
- !GCRoot <object_address>
- For a list of threads run: !Threads
- For a stack trace of all managed threads: ~*e!ClrStack
For more information you see the lecture notes from the Mastering .NET Debugging course (page P4-A-18 till P4-B-23). In addition Tess has a nice blog about general .NET debugging, performance and troubleshooting and specifically about .NET debugging.