Debugging Visual Studio packages (stories from the crypt)

If you ever developed Visual Studio integration package, you should be familiar with load failure problem. The problem manifests itself when properly deployed package cannot be loaded with error message displayed.

I'd like to stress the deployed part of the above; when such problem occurs in the development environment, there are number of typical issues causing this such as invalid registry (missing CodeBase attribute etc.), invalid PLK key or missing dependencies (am assuming here that package with invalid PLK does not get distributed :). To diagnose such issues one can use Package Load Analyzer, distributed as part of Visual Studio SDK.

However, when the issue occurs at some other workstation where properly tested package is deployed, this option is not too useful (you cannot ask every user to install VS SDK, can you?). And believe it or not, these things happen even to the software that is rock solid in local test environment. So here is my take on figuring out why deployed package does not work:

1. Ask the user to export registry branch with package registration information
   
2. Ask the user to run Visual Studio with logging enabled (devenv /log [log file path]) and ship you the log; the log will tell you if you have PLK or similar problems – in a sense it is performing the same function as Package Load Analyzer only without fancy interface
   
3. And finally, do tracing in your code! By "tracing" I mean trace every single dubious statement in package Initialize method (and every exception elsewhere however unlikely it might seem). Though better approach would be to utilize Visual Studio Output pane, sometimes the overhead is too big for unlikely scenarios. But however unlikely, if you put Trace statement in that location it can be crucial in diagnosing the problem. Mind, I advocate tracing over message boxes and other UI elements only for the problems that are deemed unlikely (that is never occur in testing, for example).
   Then if you have copious tracing embedded in your code, you can instruct the user to place diagnostics section as into devenv.exe.config file (located in IDE folder together with devenv.exe) and thus get the snapshot of what is going on in your package
   

This sequence can be pretty helpful in diagnosing problems in packages that otherwise are functioning properly in most environments. If you have alternative approaches, it would be interesting to learn them – leave a comment on the blog!