Where does VGDB store its SSH Connection info?

[BitFlipper]

I know this is a little bit out of the ordinary but I need to know where VGDB stores its SSH connection info. I ask because I’m using it in a little bit unusual way in that VGDB gets configured automatically via another system. Basically the user configures the overall project (which is quite complex, hence the need for this automation) with a special tool, and this tool then also configures VGDB with all correct settings. However VGDB SSH connection entries is a little bit of a problem right now.

These are the places where this tool currently configures VGDB:

1. …projectproject-name.Linux Debug.vgdbsettings[/list]
2. …UsersAppDataRoamingVisualGDBKnownHosts.xml
3. …UsersAppDataRoamingVisualGDBSSHConnectionsusername@host.sshconnection

This all works except on the 1st debug attempt when VGDB says it has no connection entry for the newly added host, and if I want to create the connection. What VGDB sees as connection entries does not seem to match any of the info stored at the above 3 locations. I searched through the registry but could not find these SSH connection entries there either.

I understand if you don’t want to give this type of info since I’m using VGDB in an unusual way but it would help me greatly. The main reason is to make it so that other developers can easily set up and use VGDB as part of a larger toolchain.

[BitFlipper]

OK I think I partially figured it out…

It seems the VGDB SSH Connection Manager only loads/saves SSH connection info when VS opens/closes. This means that if you have multiple VS instances open, the SSH Connection Manager in one instance can get out of sync with another one. Ideally they should load/save the info when the connection manager itself is opened/closed. This is not just for my own use case but in general it seems it would be better to do it that way because one can set up new connections in one VS instance, then close VS, then if the other instance is closed, it could wipe out the new connection again.

Having said that, if I first close all instances of VS and then run my tool to configure everything, VGDB will pick up the new connection although it complains the key has been modified. Accepting the modified key then results in a successful VGDB connect attempt. Much better but not ideal due to possible loss of connection settings if the user forgot to close all VS instances.

[BitFlipper]

OK I figured most of this this out now. I can successfully configure VGDB’s SSH connections from my automated configuration tool. The only problem I’m still running into is that VGDB only loads SSH connection info at the time when the VS project is opened. So you can open two instances of VS, set up a connection in one, and the other one will not see the connection until you exit and re-open VS. Sometimes it even gets confused and shows the same connection twice, etc.

Also when trying to debug with a valid connection, it would sometimes say there is no such connection even though it is configured in all the right places. It seems ideally it should reload connection info when the SSH connection dialog is opened, and also when starting to debug.

Once again I know my use case is not normal but I can see VGDB getting confused with SSH connections when you have more than one VS instance open, which I think many people do, at least where I work since we work on multiple source code branches at the same time.

[support]

Hi,

Thanks for pointing this out. We will add an update to our next release. Please let us know whether you need a hotfix before the release.

[BitFlipper]

@bazis wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for pointing this out. We will add an update to our next release. Please let us know whether you need a hotfix before the release.

For now we can work around it so it is not urgent but it would be nice to have a fix for this in your next release 🙂

[Author]

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