Using Artifactory as Your Symbol Server

Configuring your system to use Artifactory as your Symbol Server requires the following main steps:

1. Configure your debugger
2. Configure your build 
3. Configure repositories in Artifactory
4. Install the Artifactory Symbol Server Plugin
5. Configure IIS
6. Configure Visual Studio

Configuring Your Debugger

To enable you to step into and debug your source files, your debugger needs the corresponding .pdb files and searches for them in the following order until they are found:

1. The directory from which your binary was loaded
2. The hard-coded build directory specified in the Debug Directories entry of your portable executable (PE) file
3. Your Symbol Server cache directory (assuming you have a Symbol Server set up)
4. The Symbol Server itself

So to fully support this search order,  you need to specify the Symbol Server URL in your debugger.

Under Tools | Options | Debugging | Symbols enter http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

Configuring Your Build

You need to configure your build machine to publish your .pdb files into a known directory which is later used in your IIS configuration.

Assuming you are using TFS, and want to publish your .pdf files into a directory called Builds/symbols, your build definition would look something like the below:

Configure Repositories in Artifactory

Create the following repositories.

Install the Artifactory Symbol Server Plugin

The Artifactory Symbol Server Plugin listens for requests for symbol files and then redirects them to the Microsoft Symbol Server.

Download the Artifactory Symbol Server Plugin from GitHub and install it in your $ARTIFACTORY-HOME\etc\plugin directory.

Configure IIS

To configure your Internet Information Services (IIS) machine, you need to

• Add a virtual directory on which your .pdb files reside
• Define a MIME type to be associated with .pdb files.
• Enable directory browsing.

To add a virtual directory on your IIS, execute the following steps:

• Under Control Panel | System and Security | Administrative Tools | Internet Information Service(IIS) Manager, right click Default Website and select Add Virtual Directory.
• Set Physical path to C:\build\symbols

To define a MIME type so that your IIS associates the .pdb file extension with Symbol files, execute the following steps:

• Right click the MIME Type symbol and select Open Feature. 

• Click Add… on the right side of the window fill in the fields as follows:
  

  Field	Value
  File name extension	.pdb
  MIME type	application/octet-stream

  

Configuring Visual Studio

Before you configure Visual Studio, you need to remove the symbol cache located under C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\1\SymbolCache

Once you have removed the symbol cache, you need to change the location of the symbol (.pdb) file. Under Tools | Options | Debugging | Symbols add a new symbol server pointing to the symbols virtual directory you defined in Artifactory above.

This should be http://tfs::8081/artifactory/symbols