This tutorial shows you how to debug an ASP.NET application with
SharpDevelop.
Before we begin it should be noted that SharpDevelop does not
have great ASP.NET support. There is no web forms designer, no
intellisense for ASP.NET pages (.aspx) and no support for the new
style ASP.NET Web Site projects introduced in Visual Studio 2005.
You can however create an ASP.NET Web Application project or an
ASP.NET Web Service in SharpDevelop. If you are looking for a
better ASP.NET experience then you should use
Microsoft Visual
Web Developer. However if still want to use SharpDevelop then
here is how to debug your ASP.NET application.
Creating an ASP.NET Application
First let us create an ASP.NET Web Application. From the
File menu select New, then Solution, to open
up the New Project dialog.
On the left hand side of this dialog select ASP.NET
category underneath the C# category. On the right hand side
select the ASP.NET web page project icon. Give project a
name and choose where you want the project created and click the
Create button. SharpDevelop will then create a basic ASP.NET
Web Application project.
Download Cassini
In order to be able to debug the ASP.NET application we will be
using Cassini. Cassini is a lightweight open source web server. It
was originally released as a
sample by
Microsoft. Dmitry Robsman then
updated the sample to run under .NET 3.5. After that different
versions based on Dmitry's original work were released on
codeplex. Any of these versions of Cassini, in the list below, will
work with SharpDevelop. The version of Cassini provided by Dmitry
requires you to compile the source code. The other versions do not.
The Cassini Developer's edition has slightly different command
line options compared to the rest so it will not be covered in the
following discussion. We will use Cassini++ for the rest of this
tutorial.
- Cassini++
- Dmitry Robsman -
Cassini v3.5 or
Cassini v3.5.0.2 with friendly url/routing support.
- Cassini 3.5
Developers Edition
Download Cassini++ from the link provided and extract the files
to a directory on the same machine that you are running
SharpDevelop on.
Debugging an ASP.NET Application
First let us set a breakpoint in our application. Find the
Default.aspx.cs file in your project and open it in the text
editor. Locate the Page_Load method and set a breakpoint inside
this method on the Response.Write line.
Now you need to configure the project to run Cassini when you
debug your application. From the Project menu select
Project Options. In the options dialog select the
Debug tab. Set the Start Action to Start external
program and enter the path to the Cassini executable. In the
Start Options enter the command line that will be passed to
Cassini. The Cassini command line is of the form:
<physical-path> <port> <virtual-path>
In the screenshot below you can see an example command line
passed to Cassini. In this case Cassini will listen for requests on
port 8080, the virtual path will be set to "/" and the
physical path to your project is specified by a using SharpDevelop
property ${ProjectDir} which will be replaced when you start
debugging. You can put the full path to your project directory here
instead of using the ProjectDir property.
Save the changes you made to the project options. Then select
Run from the Debug menu. Cassini should then start.
Click the
http://localhost:8080/ hyperlink at the bottom of the Cassini
window to visit your application's web page in the default
browser. When the page is loaded in the browser the breakpoint in
Page_Load should then be hit and you can start debugging.
Attach to Process
As an alternative to configuring SharpDevelop to start Cassini
every time you debug your ASP.NET application you can leave Cassini
running and attach to its process when you need to.
First on your desktop create a shortcut to Cassini and specify
the appropriate Cassini command line as explained earlier. Note
that the ${ProjectDir} property cannot be used here so instead you
will need to put the full path to your project. Start Cassini by
double clicking the shortcut and use a browser to display your web
page. Now in SharpDevelop select Attach to Process from the
Debug menu. Select the Cassini process and click the
Attach button.
Now when you press Ctrl+F5 in the browser showing your
web page to refresh the page the breakpoint in the Page_Load method
should be hit and you can start debugging.