Debugging the ShellExtension

[alleyjo]

I'm curious, how do you setup the development environment for debugging the shell extension, since the shell extension, needs to be registered first and I believe, it's registered using SetupNgen in the release/package build?

[Rick Brewster]

You can still register it manually.

Then in Visual Studio you tell it to run explorer.exe in the project options, and put a breakpoint in the shell extension's code (build for Debug of course). Then kill explorer and hit 'start with debugging'.

[alleyjo]

Thanks for your quick response! By registering manually, does this mean a registration script needs to be written, so that the various registry entries are registered properly?

[Rick Brewster]

No I mean you use regedit.