pdb2mdb bit error in Visual Studio 2015

[ziporama]

I have VS 2015 RTM (released July 20) and also the new Unity tools for Visual Studio 2015 released along with it.

The Unity mono tool pdb2mdb fails with a bit error:

Fatal error : 
1>  Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.PdbDebugException: Unknown custom metadata item kind: 6
1>    at Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.PdbFunction.ReadCustomMetadata (Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.BitAccess bits) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
1>    at Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.PdbFunction..ctor (System.String module, ManProcSym proc, Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.BitAccess bits) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
1>    at Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.PdbFunction.LoadManagedFunctions (System.String module, Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.BitAccess bits, UInt32 limit, Boolean readStrings) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
1>    at Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.PdbFile.LoadFuncsFromDbiModule (Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.BitAccess bits, Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.DbiModuleInfo info, Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.IntHashTable names, System.Collections.ArrayList funcList, Boolean readStrings, Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.MsfDirectory dir, System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2 nameIndex, Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.PdbReader reader) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
1>    at Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.PdbFile.LoadFunctions (System.IO.Stream read, Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.BitAccess bits, Boolean readAllStrings) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
1>    at Microsoft.Cci.Pdb.PdbFile.LoadFunctions (System.IO.Stream read, Boolean readAllStrings) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
1>    at Pdb2Mdb.Driver.Convert (Mono.Cecil.AssemblyDefinition assembly, System.IO.Stream pdb, Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.MonoSymbolWriter mdb) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

The rest of it works, the conversion from the pdb output to mdb just fails.

I tried downloading the current version of Mono (4.0.2 release which has the 4.5 release of pdb2mdb) however this runs into another issue in that the release of Unity 4.x doesn't work with that (Cecil library dependency is the wrong version).

Unsure if anyone has run into this and solved it.

The same code works fine with Visual Studio 2013 btw so it's a tool/version issue as far as I can tell. There is a note on the Mono source for pdb2mdb that says there was a problem reading bits dated sometime in May which was fixed, I however conclude that the fix is definitely not in the version of Mono included with Unity 4.6.x - that uses the 4.0 Mono library. Unsure if this has anything to do with the error I'm getting above when running pdb2mdb. I would however think that the 4.5 release of pdb2mdb requires the 4.5 runtime which is fine, however once the mdb file is output, it should work with the 4.0 runtime for the purpose of guiding the debugger. Assumption there of course as I can't get pdb2mdb 4.5 to work at all right now.

Thanks!

Z.

Edited July 23, 2015 by ziporama

[sarbian]

1) Are you sure you compiled for .NET 3.5 ?

2) Mono 4.0 drops support for .NET 2.0 and 3.5 so you should keep using 3.8 or earlier

[ziporama]

Yes, the output is 3.5 (again, code runs just fine in Unity, it's just the pdb2mdb tool that bombs so that means debugging is a pain as there is no mdb created from the .NET 3.5 pdb file).

[sarbian]

Stay on VS 2013 then

[belpyro]

Try to install last release of Mono and call "%MONO_PATH%\bin\pdb2mdb.bat" with path to dll as first parameter. It has been resolved this issue for me. Enjoy! ))

[ziporama]

Moving ahead to almost a year later, under Unity 5.2.4f1 (for the KSP 1.1 update), the current release of Mono 4.5 is compatible with VS2015 so the bit error goes away when compiling under VS2015.  

Alas, only to be replaced with the new issue that Unity 5.2.4f1 only goes up to Mono 4.0 and KSP 1.1 requires 5.2.4f1.  

So, when compiling now, pdbtomdb issue is gone, but replaced by a Mono.Cecil version issue (4.x vs 4.5x).

Will this ever end?

I guess we're still using VS2013 4 years later

Edited May 2, 2016 by ziporama

[sarbian]

You may want to read the updated version of the debugging post since I lined a version that works. And no, the mono shipped with the game is still .NET 3.5 only (2.0 CLI)

Edited May 2, 2016 by sarbian

[ziporama]

@sarbian Thanks!  Your instructions fill such a gap for what is otherwise a near total vacuum of information - this is great.

I see your tools zip file contains Mono.Cecil 0.9.5 whereas the version in Unity 5.2.4f1 is 0.9.4.   I was able to compile just fine with your version of pdb2mdb and cecil 0.9.5 under VS2015.  Unfortunately, pdb2mdb.exe doesn't have a file version (0.0.0.0) so i can't tell the difference outside that it's a different file size so different file from the one shipped in Unity - I assume this is the current release.   Found some more information here: https://gist.github.com/jbevain/ba23149da8369e4a966f

In conclusion, KSP 1.1 plugins written in Visual Studio 2015, and specifically, the pdb (debug) files can only be converted to Unity debug files (mdb) by Mono.Cecil 0.9.5 and above.

 

 

Edited May 3, 2016 by ziporama
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