Mono xbuild: Copy debug symbols from NuGet packages folder into output bin folder

Question

When using NuGet packages which include symbols, Visual Studio is copying these debug symbol files (*.pdb) right into the bin output folder.

This does not happen when using NuGet and xbuild on Linux using Mono - the pdb files are not copied to the output folder.

Is there any way to let xbuild mimic the pdb-copying behavior of Visual Studio?

Answer 1

For now I was able to achieve what I wanted by writing this script, which also converts the pdb files to mdb (requires pdb2mdb to be in the path):

#!/bin/bash

PACKAGE_PATH_SUBSTR=$1
CSPROJ=$2
OUT_DIR=$3

# 1.) search for file references in the .csproj file with the help of the partial nuget package path name
# 2.) replace .dll with .pdb
# 3.) replace all left <HintPath> and </HintPath> tags
# 4.) replace windows path separators (\) with unix ones (/)
PDB_CANDIDATES=$(grep -oP '<HintPath>(.*'${PACKAGE_PATH_SUBSTR}'.*\.dll)</HintPath>' $CSPROJ | sed -e "s/\.dll/\.pdb/g" | sed -e 's/<\(\/\)\{0,1\}HintPath>//g' | sed -e 's/\\/\//g' )

# loop through all possibly existent pdb file names
for item in ${PDB_CANDIDATES}; do
        # check if the pdb file candidate really exists
        if [ -e $item ]; then
                # pdb exists, copy it to the bin output path
                cp -v ${item} ${OUT_DIR}
                # convert pdb to mdb
                pdb2mdb ${OUT_DIR}/$(basename $(echo $item | sed -e 's/\.pdb/.dll/g') )
                # if you wanted you could delete the pdb file now.
        fi
done

Usage: copy_pdb_from_nuget.sh packages MyProject.csproj ./bin