Most Wanted: Debugging For MSBuild

I posted few weeks ago about the feature poll of MSBuild team on the MSBuild blog. Here are the results that indicate that a debugger for MSBuild projects is the #1 vNext request.

Partho posted about a debugger he's created. It's on CodePlex too, which means you can help improve it. It runs as a logger, taking advantage of the rich event information that loggers receive, and the fact that loggers currently run synchronously with the build.

v1 Feature Set:

• Load project and arbitrary target files
• Set/View build environment
• Step-Into tasks and targets (F11), Run (F5), Break execution, Step into imported projects, step into CallTarget & MSBuild tasks, task & target batching
• Set breakpoints on tasks and targets, delete/view breakpoints, locate breakpoints in code
• View call stacks (esp. useful for stepping into CallTargets & MSBuild tasks), locate stack frame in code
• View debugger messages, MSBuild traces in Output window
• RO View of evaluated Items and Properties in break mode
• Handles out-of-box VS2008 projects and complex Microsoft's Developer Divisions's MSBuild based builds
• Requires only .NET Framework 3.5 RTM (no VS2008 required)

Nice tool!