Debug dynamically loaded assembly

Question

I am debugging an assembly which I loaded dynamically with Assembly.Load(Byte[]), but I am facing some problems.

First of all, I can\'t move the yellow arrow in Vis

Answer 1

The debug symbols for your assembly are not being loaded into the application domain. When you use the string variety, .NET automatically looks for a .PDB alongside the filename you specify.

To load an assembly and its symbols from byte arrays, use Assembly.Load(byte[], byte[]), like so:

Dim data = My.Computer.FileSystem.ReadAllBytes(file.FullName)
Dim pdbData = My.Computer.FileSystem.ReadAllBytes(pdbFile.FullName)
Assembly.Load(data, pdbData)

Answer 2

When you pass it an array of bytes there's no way to know what file it comes from (or if it even comes from a file) so it can't locate the PDB file with the source code line information.

You can fix this by saving the byte[] as a file and making sure there's a PDB for it with the same file name.