Check if application was started from within Visual Studio debug session

Question

I am working on an application that installs a system wide keyboard hook. I do not want to install this hook when I am running a debug build from inside the visual studio (or else it would hang the studio and eventually the system), and I can avoid this by checking if the DEBUG symbol is defined.

However, when I debug the release version of the application, is there a way to detect that it has been started from inside visual studio to avoid the same problem? It is very annoying to have to restart the studio/the computer, just because I had been working on the release build, and want to fix some bugs using the debugger having forgotten to switch back to the debug build.

Currently I use something like this to check for this scenario:

System.Diagnostics.Process currentProcess = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess(); string moduleName = currentProcess.MainModule.ModuleName; bool launchedFromStudio = moduleName.Contains(".vshost"); 

I would call this the "brute force way", which works in my setting, but I would like to know whether there's another (better) way of detecting this scenario.

Answer 1

Try: System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached

Answer 2

For those working with Windows API, there's a function which allows you to see if any debugger is present using:

if( IsDebuggerPresent() ) {     ... } 

Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms680345.aspx