How-To's

Introducing dotPeek 1.2 Early Access Program

It has been a while since dotPeek, our free .NET decompiler, received its latest update, but that doesn’t mean we put it aside. Today we’re ready to launch the dotPeek 1.2 Early Access Program that introduces a substantial set of new features.

Starting from version 1.2 dotPeek learns to perform as a symbol server and supply Visual Studio debugger with the information required to debug assembly code. This can be most useful when debugging a project that references an assembly from an external class library.

dotPeek listens for requests from Visual Studio debugger, generates PDB files and source files for the requested assemblies on demand, and returns them back to the debugger. dotPeek provides several options to choose exactly which assemblies you want it to generate symbol files for.

Symbol server options in dotPeek 1.2 EAP

To learn more on how to set up dotPeek as a symbol server and use it for debugging in Visual Studio, please refer to this guide.

In case that the Visual Studio cache already contains PDB files for certain assemblies but you would like to replace them with PDB files generated by dotPeek, use the option to generate PDB files manually. In order to do that, simply select an assembly in dotPeek’s Assembly Explorer, right-click it and choose Generate PDB.

Generate pdb in dotPeek 1.2

dotPeek can export to project and generate PDB files in the background, meaning that you can explore assemblies during PDB generation or assembly export. To address cases when it’s not clear whether PDB files were generated properly, dotPeek has a dedicated tool window that shows current status and results of PDB generation.

PDB generation status in dotPeek 1.2 EAP

In addition to the set of features that streamline debugging decompiled code, dotPeek 1.2 adds quick search and node filtering in various trees, most notably Assembly Explorer. Searching and filtering using lowerCamelHumps is supported for these scenarios.

Search in Assembly Explorer in dotPeek 1.2 EAP

If you’re interested to learn about other fixes and improvements made for dotPeek 1.2 EAP, this link should help you out.

Does the above sound enticing? Download dotPeek 1.2 EAP and give it a try!

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