Recreate stack trace with line numbers from user bug-report in .net?

Question

First, the problem: I have several free projects, and as any software they contains bugs. Some fellow users when encounter bug send me a bug-reports with stack

Answer 1

You are absolutely on the right track of needing PDB files to accurately get source and line information. I would question any perceived issues with shipping PDB files as actually being a valid concern, but, assuming there is a valid reason, you can do this but it requires more effort on you part to create the appropriate software build environment.

Microsoft Symbol Server will index the debug symbols and store them for use at a later date when you have a crash dump, for instance, and need symbols available. You can point either Visual Studio or Windbg at your own symbol server instance, just like Microsoft's, and it will pull down the symbols required for the debugging that version of your application (assuming you indexed the symbols with symbol server before shipping).

Once you have the appropriate symbols for a build, you need to make sure that you have the appropriate source files that belong that build.

This is where Microsoft Source Server comes in. Just like where Symbol Server indexes symbols, source server will index source to make sure you have the appropriate version of the source code belonging to a software build.

Working versions of Version Control, Symbol Server and Source Server should be part of your software configuration management strategy.

There are third party tools, some commercial, that will provide you with an API to generate application snapshots, but as you already understand, you need a mechanism for getting those snapshots uploaded to your environment somehow.

John Robbins on PDB Files

John Robbins on Source Server

Check out WinDbg documentation on getting a Symbol Server up and running.