1. Open up VS 2008 and load your project.
2. Delete all breakpoints in your project.
3. Right click on the project and go to the project properties.
4. For the configuration, select Active (Debug).
5. Under the enable debuggers section, check Enable unmanaged code debugging and enable the Visual Studio hosting process.
6. Save.
7. Right click on your project and click Clean.
8. Right click on your project again and click Rebuild.
9. In Windows Explorer, go to debug folder and copy the output (.dll, .exe., etc.) to the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Team Foundation\Work Item Tracking\Custom Controls\9.0 (this is where TF 2008 WI looks for the .dll and .wicc files).
10. On your toolbar with the drop down set to debug, click the arrow.
11. You will get a mini screen with your control on it. There should be a load button. Click on it and make sure you load the .dll/.exe from the path specified in step 9.
12. Leave it open and don’t close anything. Open up another instance of VS2008.
13. In Team Explorer, open the Work item type that contains your custom control (Add Work Item-> . . . . . ).
14. Go back to the instance of VS2008 in step 1 and go to Debug->Attach to Process.
15. In the attach to Process Window, leave the Transport as Default and the Attach To field to have checked managed code and native code.
16. In the Available processes window, you will see the process devenv.exe with an ID and the title of the Work Item you just created. Select that row and click on Attach.
17. You will see some processing in the background as it is loading symbols. Once it is done, set your breakpoints accordingly.
18. Go back to your 2nd instance of VS2008 (step 12) and perform what you need to perform on the Work item you created in step 13 to make sure the break point gets hit.
19. Once your feel the breakpoint is hit, go back to the 1st instance of VS2008 (step 1 and step 17) and you will see the breakpoints you set hit. Now all you have to do is debug (sigh!).

I MADE A MISTAKE ON SECOND.

THIS IS WHAT IT SHOULD BE: copy /Y “$(TargetDir)*.*” “$(UserProfile)\Application Data\Microsoft\Team Foundation\Work Item Tracking\Custom Controls\9.0″

I apologize

Second, I would suggest changing this line:

copy /Y “$(TargetDir)*.*” “$(UserProfile)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Team Foundation\Work Item Tracking\Custom Controls\9.0\”

to

copy /Y “$(TargetDir)*.*” “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Team Foundation\Work Item Tracking\Custom Controls\9.0″

The reason is the path I have stated above is what I have seen others recommend to put the custom controls to. Your path doesn’t even exist on my machine. I was getting some weird errors when I put in your path so that’s why I changed it and it worked. Let me know if you disagree and/or I am missing the point.

Third, I want to debug this when I have brought up a Work Item. How do I do that? If I follow your steps, I just get the control brought up which is pretty useless; I want to debug the control as if I were debuggin an app. If the control is clicked on the work Item, I want to debug it. How would I do this so I can step through the code when it is part of the work item?

Thanks in advance.