how-to-build-and-run-ilcompiler-in-vscode.md

Please ensure that pre-requisites are installed for a successful build of the repo.

Note:

• Instructions below assume ~/corert is the repo root.

Setting up

Please make sure you have latest VS Code, C# extension, and .NET Core available.

This guide assumes that your VS code workspace is set to the root of the repo.

Running VS Code

We've checked-in reasonable default launch.json and tasks.json under corert/.vscode directory. You only need to run vscode form corert root:

code ~/corert

And then press SHIFT+COMMAND+B to start the build.

Debugging ILC.exe using .NET Core Debugger

Go to the debug pane and click Debug, choose .NET Core as the environment. If needed, you can change program property in launch.json (the gear button) to point to a different flavor of ilc:

            "windows": {
                "program": "${workspaceRoot}/bin/Windows_NT.x64.Debug/tools/ilc.dll"
            },
            "osx": {
                "program": "${workspaceRoot}/bin/OSX.x64.Debug/tools/ilc.dll"
            },
            "linux": {
                "program": "${workspaceRoot}/bin/Linux.x64.Debug/tools/ilc.dll"
            },

By default we've disabled automatic build before debug. If you want to change that, you can change the preLaunchTask property to "build". But this is not currently recommended.

Getting ILC response files

A .ilc.rsp file path can be easily obtained from a .NET core project that you want to debug by following command:

dotnet build /t:LinkNative /t:Rebuild /v:Detailed | grep ".ilc.rsp"

Once you have the ilc path, you can change launch.json accordingly:

            "args": ["@obj/Debug/netcoreapp2.1/native/<netcore_app_name>.ilc.rsp"],
            "cwd": "<netcore_app_root_folder>",

• args - the argument to ILC
• cwd - the current directory where ILC is running. You can set it to the .NET Core project root.