Debug Mode Firefox 1.5

Run Firefox 1.5 in Debug mode

Written By Yi Shen.

Introduction

I previously wrote how to build Firefox in Windows, and here I was work on how to run firefox 1.5 in debug mode by Visual Studio 2003 debuger and better understand how certain things work.

Required

1. Firefox 1.5 already build on Windows
2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 installed

Instructions

First we need open the firefix project in Visual Studio:

File>Open>Project...

This will start the Open Project Dialog and you should navigate to your firefox.exe directory, for me it is:

C:\proj\mozilla\hopefullyWorked.firefox.optimized\dist\bin

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Visual Studio will create a Solution File (.sln) in the same directory as firefox.exe and give you the Solution Explorer





Now we are ready to set a breakpoint in a source file so we can stop Firefox and inspect it running at the appropriate point. Open a source file

File > Open > File...

For example for our Project:

C:\proj\mozilla\content\canvas\src\nsCanvasRenderingContext2D.cpp

Then locate a line for your breakpoint and click to the left of the line number in the gray selection border then it set a red circle: