Debugging AddIn

Hello,

Would like to create an AddIn for Tia Portal. So looked at the example provided here:
https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/document/109773999/

But you can't debug in this way of working. How do you debug an addin?

Hi Ben,

debugging is easy but the whole process is a bit annoying as you have to do multiple steps every time you want to test you addin.

Preparation

1. build your AddIn
2. copy the AddIn to the AddIn folder
3. activate the AddIn in the task card frame

Startup the AddIn

1. open the context menu on the item your AddIn was build for
2. hover the mouse over the context menu entry you created
   (this way your AddIn is loaded as a process)

Attach to your Addin

Assuming you are using Visual Studio proceed as follows

1. Set a breakpoint in your AddIn
2. Debug -> Attach to process
3. find the process "Siemens.Engineering.AddIn.Loader.x64.exe" and attach
   There might be multiple processes. I would recommend deactivating all other AddIns because there is no way to find out which process belongs to your AddIn.

So you see there are a lot of steps to do when you want to debug but I can't think of any other way. Maybe someone else can contribute a better way.

Hi Ben,

there is a new way to debug a TIA Add-In using the TIA Add-In Tester!

The TIA Add-In Tester allows you to test a TIA Add-In during development without having to install & activate it in the TIA Portal. The TIA Add-In to be tested is loaded in the TIA Add-In Tester as an Openness Application, connected to the TIA Portal, and executed.

Hello Axel,

Thanks will try this out now.
The process your talking about crashes a lot here and as a result the Visual Studio Debugger stops too...

Is there an tia or addin log file to see what's happening?

Hi Ben,

when you "loose" connection it means your add-in crashed somewhere. When you use the TIA Add-in Tester, you'll be able to find the root of your crash more easily because you are attached right from the start. Just try it out and let me know.

Like I said all my code is inside trycatch blocks, even added a try catch around the BuildContextMenuItems override...
When I attach and hover over the treeview of TiaPortal the crash already happens.

Tried out the AddIn Tester, I see the pro's but it's very time consuming to build up the string to IEngineeringObject conversion. Was working in a project with some user folders and then a specific drive inside them.

My code doesn't use this feature.

Maybe the linked dll's use it.

These dll's are linked:

I've found a good solution for the debugging 
This is a generic static function that adds try catch to the functions to the AddActionItem
Here I added a conditional compilation symbol Attach and give a message box.
When you get that message the thread is already running and you can easily attach/reattach the visual studio debugger.