Visual Studio, library source when debugging

Question

Just maybe trivial, maybe stupid question.

I have two solutions:

1) The main app 2) The sets of libraries

The first solution is accessible via the SourceSafe with the dll files(from the 2 solution) placed in its lib directory.

In order to debug the main app with the ability to jump to the source code of the libraries from the 2 solution Do i have to add the projects from 2 to 1? And Is it the only one option?

Even if I added (if it is possible to add with omitting certain projects in the SC) projects from 2 to 1 solution, I would have to change dll references in the app which is controlled via SourceSafe and I would mess it up for my colleagues.

What Can I do?

Answer 1

To debug all you need is that all third-party dlls have their corresponding pdb in the same directory. When you step into a third-party function for which you have pdb, Visual Studio will prompt you for the source, At this time you may browse to a local or network share where you have a the third-party source.

Answer 2

The place I used to work for used .NET Reflector to step through external DLLs. It's a Visual Studio add-on that uses reflection to allow you to debug through the source code of .NET binaries (actually their MSIL reversed equivalents) and is pretty simple and efficient when it comes to non-obfuscated code.