Where is debug start action options in a C# DLL project for Visual Studio 2022

Question

It seems that with the new interface for "debug profiles UI" in Visual Studio 2022, I can no longer find the start action options (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/debugger/how-to-debug-from-a-dll-project?view=vs-2022#specify-a-calling-app-in-a-managed-dll-project).

Any idea where is the new location of the start action options?

Answer 1

Yes, for SDK-based projects the new launch profile UI is really confusing. They are trying to get it to behave like VS Code and it is a ways off.

To configure a DLL project to be debuggable (instead of having a corresponding unit test or test app project) you need to go to the launch profile UI dialog via the project properties or Debug menu. Once in the UI you should have a default profile for the class library but this doesn't work for DLLs. Add a new profile from the toolbar at the top and select Executable. Then you can enter executable information like you could before. Behind the scenes it is just updating the launchsettings.json so you could also just edit that file directly.

At least with the current version of VS 2022 you cannot select the profile to run against when you debug (like you can for VS Code). The only way I have found to work around this is to delete the auto-generated profile that was created. It appears the debugger first tries to use the profile matching the project name. If it doesn't find it uses the first one it finds but I could be wrong about this.

Answer 2

VS shows different Debug start actions for different project formats:

• The project files with MSBuild project format will use the old Debug settings window.
• The project files with SDK project format will use the new Debug settings window.

All the project that you create using new project templates for .NET Core and .NET >=5 will use SDK style. But the .NET Framework project templates are still using MSBuild project format by default; however, one may modify the project format to SDK style for .NET 4.8 project as well. Then in this case, VS shows the new Debug start actions for .NET 4.8 as well.

How to set StartAction for SDK style projects?

In project properties, go to Debug section, Genera, and click on "Open debug lunch profile UI".

• You can specify command line argument for the current debug profile
• Or you can create a new profile (Executable) and specify the executable if you want (like specifying VS, when you want to debug design time of VS).

After you created the new profile, you can just choose any profile from debug toolbar dropdown button and start that profile.

Here is the project properties > Debug > General section

A new executable profile added, to start VS for example to debug design time features of a control

You can set the command line argument

For your startup project, you can choose the profile

Above, is tested on:

Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 (64-bit) - Current
Version 17.4.4