No breakpoints when Remote debugging with Delphi 2010 - so stuck on Delphi 7

Question

I've come back to looking at remote debugging with Delphi 2010 after my initial investigation last August. I've made sure that D2010 has updates 4&5 and that the remote debugger is the latest from the Embarcadero wesite. Following the very useful instructions here I can load the remote process and run it fine, but I cant use breakpoints. The RSM and EXE files are together in the remote directory.

Is there anything I should check? Can I load the symbol table manually? There seem to be no debugger settings required, but could I force something to force D2010 to load my symbol table?

This is the only problem now keeping me on Delphi 7 - I have several production machines that cannot have the IDE installed for debugging, and I really do need some kind of remote debugging support for these.

As a corollary - is the support for remote debugging any better for XE?

Thanks, Brian.

Answer 1

You should follow that wiki link, but I don't usually keep the RSM file separate, I usually link the TD32 (remote debug) symbols right into the main EXE, it works better.

I wrote some of that wiki. My experience is that:

(1) delphi 7 is still the most reliable remote debugger.

(2) Delphi 2009, 2010, and XE work very well, and have been getting better, and the only remaining gotcha that I have found is that you might have to restart both your computers sometimes, in order to get the remote debug agent up.

Inability to set breakpoints, or to see those blue circles that indicate that debug info is available usually means you should modify your project linker settings.

I have used 2009, 2010, and XE remote debuggers heavily, and they work.