How do you see source code when debugging a native c++ dump file in Visual Studio

Question

I got a minidump from a server on which my native c++ app was running. I also have the exe and pdb files. I am able to open the minidump using Visual Studio 2005 Pro and it correctly loads the symbols from the pdb file.

I run the debugger (F5) and it shows me that it crashed. When I click on the stack trace to see where, it tells me that it can't find the source code "There is no source code available for the current location.".

How do I tell Visual Studio where the source code is?

My exe is an optimized release build that I build with a pdb file.

Answer 1

From this MSDN page:

In the Solution Property Pages, you can change the directories where the debugger looks for sources files and tell the debugger to ignore selected source files. See Debug Source Files, Common Properties, Solution Property Pages Dialog Box.

Make sure you supply VS with the sources that correspond to the binaries and PDB files.

Normally, VS should ask you where the sources are when first double-clicking a stack frame. I ran into a problem where VS would pop up the There is no source code available for the current location. dialog when clicking on some stack frames only, but display the source for others. This turned out to be because the /Zi flag was not set for some projects, causing the link back to the source files to be missing. This flag can be set in Project Propery Pages > C/C++ > General > Debug Information Format.