How to get stack trace of a running process from within a Visual Studio add-in?

add-in, c#, stack-trace, visual-studio

Solution

The easiest way would be to ask the debugger for the stack frames through the `DTE` automation object. The `DTE` object should be available to you through your add-in. The property you want is `Debugger.CurrentThread.StackFrames`. If you're using .NET 4, you can do:

    static string GetCurrentStackTrace(DTE dte)
    {
        bool canGetStackTrace =
            (dte != null) &&
            (dte.Debugger != null) &&
            (dte.Debugger.CurrentThread != null) &&
            (dte.Debugger.CurrentThread.StackFrames != null);

        if (!canGetStackTrace)
            return string.Empty;

        return string.Join(
            "\n",
            dte.Debugger.CurrentThread.StackFrames.Cast<StackFrame>().Select(f => f.FunctionName)
        );
    }

Otherwise, you can do:

    static string GetCurrentStackTrace(DTE dte)
    {
        bool canGetStackTrace =
            (dte != null) &&
            (dte.Debugger != null) &&
            (dte.Debugger.CurrentThread != null) &&
            (dte.Debugger.CurrentThread.StackFrames != null);

        if (!canGetStackTrace)
            return string.Empty;

        StringBuilder stackTrace = new StringBuilder();

        foreach (StackFrame frame in dte.Debugger.CurrentThread.StackFrames)
        {
            stackTrace.AppendFormat("{0}\n", frame.FunctionName);
        }

        return stackTrace.ToString();
    }

The painful and involved way would be to use `ICorDebug` and `StackWalk64` to get managed and native stacks separately and then stitch them together by hand. Since you're a VS add-in, you might as well let the debugger do the heavy lifting for you!

Problem

I am writing a Visual Studio add-in in C# which will run while I am debugging a process in the same Visual Studio window and I need access to that the process' stack trace from within my add-in. I tried putting this code into my add-in but it returns the add-in's stack trace, not the process I am debugging. ``` System.Diagnostics.StackTrace stacktrace = new System.Diagnostics.StackTrace(true); System.Diagnostics.StackFrame stackframe = stacktrace.GetFrame(0); ``` Any help would be appreciated.

Original source