It's .Net Source Day! Let the Source Loose.... Today is the day you can configure VS2008 to grab the actual source code to the .Net Framework and step into it as you debug...

ScottGu's Blog - .NET Framework Library Source Code now available

"Last October I blogged about our plan to release the source code to the .NET Framework libraries, and enable debugging support of them with Visual Studio 2008.  Today I'm happy to announce that this is now available for everyone to use. Specifically, you can now browse and debug the source code for the following .NET Framework libraries:

• .NET Base Class Libraries (including System, System.CodeDom, System.Collections, System.ComponentModel, System.Diagnostics, System.Drawing, System.Globalization, System.IO, System.Net, System.Reflection, System.Runtime, System.Security, System.Text, System.Threading, etc).

• ASP.NET (System.Web, System.Web.Extensions)

• Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms)

• Windows Presentation Foundation (System.Windows)

• ADO.NET and XML (System.Data and System.Xml)

We are in the process of adding additional framework libraries (including LINQ, WCF and Workflow) to the above list. I'll blog details on them as they become available in the weeks and months ahead.

Enabling Reference Source Access in Visual Studio 2008

Enabling .NET Framework source access within Visual Studio 2008 only takes a few minutes to setup. Shawn Burke has a detailed blog post that covers the exact steps on how to enable this in more depth here. .

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Shawn Burke's Blog - Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code

"It's finally here - the launch of the .NET Reference Source project.  This post (hopefully!) contains everything you need to know.  Over the past few weeks, we ran a pilot of this feature and collected lots of great data that helped us work through some issues and understand where people were likely to have problems. 

First, though, if you have any problems, please make sure you've followed all of the steps exactly as described.  If you're still having problems, please check the FAQ/Troubleshooting section at the bottom.  If that doesn't work, post a comment below and I'll look into it.

Basic Setup

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Following Shawn's directions, it takes 5-10 minutes (or less) to configure your VS2008 (all editions except Express) to go to a MS site, download the symbols for the .Net Framework, which then leads to the magic of downloading the actual .Net source (if it's available).

We're talking source source... Comments and all. And everything "works." Watches, debug visualizers, etc, etc.

Wow. That's just COOL.

 

Thanks to Scott (scottisafool) for the second head's up of the day...