Implementing and Registering a Port Supplier

The role of a port supplier is to track and supply ports, which in turn manage processes. At the time a port needs to be created, the port supplier is instantiated using CoCreate with the port supplier's GUID (the session debug manager [SDM] will use the port supplier the user selected or the port supplier specified by the project system). The SDM will then call IDebugPortSupplier2::CanAddPort to see if any ports can be added. If a port can be added, a new port is requested by calling IDebugPortSupplier2::AddPort and passing it an IDebugPortRequest2 that describes the port. AddPort will return a new port represented by an IDebugPort2 interface.

Discussion

A port is created by a port supplier, which is in turn associated with a machine or debug server. A server can enumerate its port suppliers through theIDebugCoreServer2::EnumPortSuppliers method, and a port supplier can enumerate its ports through the IDebugPortSupplier2::EnumPorts method.

In addition to the typical COM registration, a port supplier must register itself with Visual Studio by placing its CLSID and name in specific registry locations. A Debugging SDK helper function called SetMetric handles this chore: it is called once for each item to be registered, thus:

SetMetric(metrictypePortSupplier,
          <GUID of your port supplier>,
          metricCLSID,
          <CLSID of your port supplier>,
          false,
          NULL)
SetMetric(metrictypePortSupplier,
          <GUID of your port supplier>,
          metricName,
          <name of your port supplier>,
          false,
          NULL);

A port supplier unregisters itself by calling RemoveMetric (another Debugging SDK helper function) once for each item that was registered, thus:

RemoveMetric(metrictypePortSupplier,
             <GUID of your port supplier>,
             metricCLSID,
             NULL);
RemoveMetric(metrictypePortSupplier,
             <GUID of your port supplier>,
             metricName,
             NULL);

A port supplier can supply its name and GUID through the methods IDebugPortSupplier2::GetPortSupplierName and IDebugPortSupplier2::GetPortSupplierId, respectively.

See Also

Reference

SDK Helpers for Debugging

Concepts

Port Suppliers

Other Resources

Implementing a Port Supplier