Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
debugger can subtly change the runtime environment, something that can make the
hardest, nastiest bugs very difficult to find.
Remote debugging is a pain, not because it
s hard to set up but because you have to
make sure that the most recent version of your game executable is easily available for
the remote machine. Most debuggers have a mechanism for remote debugging, and
Visual Studio is no exception.
'
To Copy or to Share, That Is the Question
Any wired or even a wireless network can allow you to share a directory on
your development machine and have the remote machine read your game
s
executable and data files right where you develop. If your network is really
slow or your game image is huge, it
'
s going to be faster to copy the entire
image of your game over to the test machine and run it from there. The only
problem with this solution is that you have to constantly copy files from your
development box over to the test machine, and it
'
s easy to get confused
regarding which files have been copied where. On a fast network, you can
also eliminate file copying by sharing your development directory so the
remote machine can directly access the most recent build.
'
On the remote system, you will run a little utility that serves as a communications
conduit for your debugger. This utility for Visual Studio is called MSVSMON.EXE.
Run a search for this file where you installed Visual Studio and copy the contents
of the entire directory to a shared folder on your primary development machine.
The utility runs on the remote machine, and a convenient way to get it there is to
place it in a shared spot on your development machine. MSVSMON.EXE requires
some of the DLLs in that directory, and it
'
s small enough to just copy the whole
thing to the remote machine.
Since the methods for running the remote debugger change with updates to Visual
Studio, the best way to learn how to do this is to go up to MSDN and search for
“
There are a few steps you need to follow. First, you
share or copy your application to the remote machine. Next, run MSVSMON.EXE
on the remote machine to start the remote debugging monitor (see Figure 23.2).
Back on your development machine, set your debugging properties to launch a
remote debugger and the remote debugging properties to find your remote machine.
Make sure that you have the right permissions or an administrator account on the
remote machine, or you won
'
t be able to connect. You
'
ll also need to open ports in
your firewall.
Set Up Remote Debugging.
”
