45.4. .NET Framework Reference Source
One of the more interesting trends that has emerged from Microsoft in recent years is an increased openness and even willingness to embrace open source. The ASP.NET MVC framework, covered in Chapter 37, is a good example of this, because the source code for this has been released as a buildable Visual Studio project solution.
However, arguably more significant than this has been the release of the source code for a large number of base class libraries in the .NET Framework. Available under the read-only Microsoft Reference License, it allows you to step into and debug the .NET Framework code as part of a debugging session. Though we could always infer the programmer's intent by using Reflector, there is no comparison to browsing the actual source code, including the inline documentation. The really good news is that this documentation is quite comprehensive.
The first step to enabling access to the source code is to configure a couple of Debugger settings. Open the Tools
Options menu item and select the Debugging tab. If you are using the Visual Basic Profile, you'll need to select the Show All Settings option to see all these options. Ensure that the Enable Just My Code option is unchecked, and the "Enable source server support" option is checked, as shown in Figure 45-9.
Figure 45.9. Figure 45-9
Secondly, navigate to the Symbols tab in ...