How to start a child process in the same Visual Studio debugging session as the parent, programmatically?

Question

When running a process under the debugger, I would like to start a child process in the same debugger.

Currently, I use

Process.Start("sample.exe");

I want it to be something like this:

if (Debugger.IsAttached)
    // start "sample.exe" in the same debugging session
else
    Process.Start("sample.exe");

I could pass a flag to the child process that instructs it to call Debugger.Launch(), but that won't catch start up errors, and it results in a debugging session where some features are not enabled (such as edit and continue, etc). It's preferable to have the debugger launch the process directly.

Answer 1

You should attach debugger to process you are starting. This could be done:

1. Manually from Visual Studio after starting "sample.exe" select it menu Debug > Attach to process..
2. Programmatically attach debugger inside "sample.exe"
3. Attaching to a Process using VS.NET Automation Model
4. UPDATE: You can setup windows environment to attach debugger every time "sample.exe" starts: Launch the Debugger Automatically (you will need to call Debugger.Break anyway)
5. Some external tool maybe

Here is code for "sample.exe" to attach debugger:

if (!Debugger.IsAttached)
     Debugger.Launch();
Debugger.Break();

You should pass some parameter to "sample.exe" to verify if you need to attach debugger.

Process.Start("sample.exe", "Debug=true");

Answer 2

you can change the properties of your solution to start multiple apps.

an explanation is here Run Multiple projects

The MSDN article is here MSDN Article on running multiple projects