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GettingStartedWithLINQPad.md

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Getting Started with ClrMD & LINQPad

LINQPad is an awesome tool created by Joe Albahari (writer of C# in a Nutshell). It's free to use but I encourage you to buy a license for the autocompletion.

ClrMD combined with LINQPad does not totally replace a full blown memory profiler, but once you get started I guarantee you will rarely open a classic memory profiler again. Investigating dumps and memory issue can be a boring and tedious task, but now you can code your way to the solution!

Install LINQPad (x86 & x64)

To open a dump with LINQPad, you must launch LINQPad in the same architecture (x86 or x64) as the machine that created the dump.

If you don’t use the corresponding architecture, you will get this error: Mismatched Architecture exception

Add ClrMD references & namespaces

ClrMD.Extensions is now available on nuget.org.

In "Query properties", add the nuget package

  • ClrMD.Extensions

Note: Adding nuget packages is not available in the free version of LinQPad. If purchasing a license is not an option you can download the package separately add the assemblies manually.

Include these namespaces in the “Additional Namespace Imports” tab:

  • ClrMD.Extensions
  • ClrMD.Extensions.LINQPad
  • Microsoft.Diagnostics.Runtime

Tip: In “Query Properties”, you can click “Set as default for new queries” to have ClrMD available by default. I personally choose to have one Query configured with ClrMD and clone the query (Ctrl+Shift+C) when I want to create another.

Set up your template scripts (optional)

Most ClrMD investigation starts with either Threads or Heap info. I've built two template script that will give you a summary with this information.

You can start with these scripts and 'Clone' (Ctrl+Shift+C) the query when you wan't to get more specific informations.

Change LINQPad settings to use MTA threads

This step is no longer required for LINQPad version 4.55.3 and up because the STA thread running the query is now reused.

LINQPad launch each query execution in a new STA thread by default. Since ClrMD uses COM objects, the ClrMDSession is created in a query execution and it will fail in a second query execution because the COM objects will be accessed from another STA threads. The workaround I found is to configure LINQPad to use MTA thread.

LINQPad Menu -> Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Run Queries in MTA Threads = True

This is the error you will get on the second query execution: STA error