Debugging Chromium on Windows

.sympath+ SRV*c:\Symbols*https://chromium-browser-symsrv.commondatastorage.googleapis.com

 

_NT_SYMBOL_PATH=SRV*C:\symbols*https://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols;SRV*C:\symbols*https://chromium-browser-symsrv.commondatastorage.googleapis.com

 

Multi-process issues

Chromium can be challenging to debug because of its multi-process architecture. When you select Run in the debugger, only the main browser process will be debugged. The code that actually renders web pages (the Renderer) and the plugins will be in separate processes that‘s not (yet!) being debugged. The ProcessExplorer tool has a process tree view where you can see how these processes are related. You can also get the process IDs associated with each tab from the Chrome Task Manager (right-click on an empty area of the window title bar to open).

Automatically attach to child processes

There are two Visual Studio extensions that enable the debugger to automatically attach to all Chrome processes, so you can debug all of Chrome at once. Microsoft‘s Child Process Debugging Power Tool is a standalone extension for this, and VsChromium is another option that bundles many other additional features. In addition to installing one of these extensions, you must run Visual Studio as Administrator, or it will silently fail to attach to some of Chrome‘s child processes.

Single-process mode

One way to debug issues is to run Chromium in single-process mode. This will allow you to see the entire state of the program without extra work (although it will still have many threads). To use single-process mode, add the command-line flag