Hi there

Can anybody help me get started with some debugging. I've done a lot of ASP.NET development before, but I'm a bit stuck getting my head around how to debug a custom ASCX module with code behind - it seems to be quite different to the way I've always debugged before, due to the absence of a specific ASPX page on which to target the debugger.

I'm working by opening the DNN installation as a 'web site' in Visual Studio 2005, File > Open Web Site , so that I am actually manipulating the files that IIS 6.0 runs on the W2K3 production server. This method doesn't actually involve creating a solution file as such, but the 'web site' node does include the Build Web Site option. However, really all I want to do is rebuild the module that I'm making changes to, including debug symbols etc, and then step through the code behind. As far as I can gather from my research so far, I need to open the portal on my development PC to ensure W3WP.EXE is started on the server, generate the .pdb file for the module, and then use VS 'Attach to Process' option to debug the remote W3WP.EXE process running on the web server. The problem is that I don' t think I am building the module correctly, as no pdb file appears to be created in the DNN bin directory, and presumably this is why when the debugger is running, the breakpoints in VS simply appear as 'The breakpoints will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document'. I have set the debug option in the DNN web.config file to "true", but I gather that this is not relevant to my problem, as it doesn't seem to make a difference?

So my questions are:

1. How do you rebuild an individual ASCX module in VS without having to rebuild the entire web site. Surely I don't need to have a separate solution file for each and every module?

2. How can I rebuild an ASCX module to create a pdb file, and where should I expect the pdb file to appear on the remote web server installation?

Thanks very much for any guidance you can offer!

Regards