Simpler debugging of Vista Media Center plugins

One thing that always bothered me is the workflow when debugging media center plugins.

I’m used to pressing F5 and having my debugger automatically attach to my process. This is not the way it works for media center plugins.

To launch a media center plugin you have to execute ehshell.exe, and to debug these plugins you need to attach to exexthost.exe, a different process.

So, for example, our debug option for media browser says:

• Start external program: C:\Windows\ehome\ehshell.exe

• Command line arguments: /entrypoint:{CE32C570-4BEC-4aeb-AD1D-CF47B91DE0B2}{FC9ABCCC-36CB-47ac-8BAB-03E8EF5F6F22}

This configuration forces media center to launch our media browser plugin on start-up.

But… it only attaches to ehshell.exe forcing us a second, very annoying step which involves hunting down ehexthost.exe in the process list and attaching to it. It’s such a waste of time.

So … I wrote a little visual studio macro to take care of this shoddy work flow:

Public Sub CompileRunAndAttachToEhExtHost()

    DTE.Solution.SolutionBuild.Build(True)
    DTE.Solution.SolutionBuild.Debug()

    Dim trd As System.Threading.Thread = _
        New System.Threading.Thread(AddressOf AttachToEhExtHost)
    trd.Start()

End Sub

Public Sub AttachToEhExtHost()
    Dim i As Integer = 0
    Do Until i = 50
        i = i + 1
        Try

            For Each proc In DTE.Debugger.LocalProcesses
                If (proc.Name.IndexOf("ehexthost.exe") <> -1) Then
                    proc.Attach()
                    Exit Sub
                End If
            Next
        Catch e As Exception
            ' dont care - stuff may be busy 
        End Try
        Threading.Thread.Sleep(100)
    Loop
End Sub

To install it:

• Tools->Macros->Macros IDE…

• Expand MyMacros

• Paste the code into your macro file

Next, bind your macro to a shortcut key

• Tools->Options->Keyboard

• Click on “Press shortcut keys:”

• Press the shortcut you want (I use CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-A)

• Start a search in the "show commands containing… " box. Search for “CompileRunAndAttachToEhExtHost”

• Click Assign

You're done …

Now to Compile->Launch and Debug your media center plugin all you need to do is click CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-A