Proton Debugging Tips For Windows Developers

This document is intended for people who are used to working with games natively running on Windows and want to use familiar tools.

Table Of Contents

• Analyzing Minidumps
  • Introduction
  • Visual Studio
  • WinDbg
• Live Debugging
  • How To
  • Getting A Debug Build Of Proton

Analyzing Minidumps

Introduction

Starting Proton 9 every released build (includes stable and experimental) the build is uploaded to a symbol store. Any tool that can understand those (e.g. Visual Studio, WinDbg) can be pointed to https://proton-archive.steamos.cloud/.

Visual Studio

1. After opening a minidump in Visual Studio you need to click on "set symbol paths" or click Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> Symbols. This is global and needs to be done only once.

2. Click on the plus button and add https://proton-archive.steamos.cloud/.

3. Close the Options Window and proceed to any debugging action as you would normally do. You should see symbols being loaded from the just added location.

4. Debugging should now work just like the native one including call stack, variables, etc. Too see the Wine/Proton part of callstack you can select "show external code".

WinDbg

1. Click File -> Settings -> Debugging Settings
2. Enter srv*https://proton-archive.steamos.cloud/ in the "symbol path" field.

4. Debugging should now work just like the native one including call stack, variables, etc.

Live Debugging

How To

For loading dev builds of games onto a Steam Deck see https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/loadgames

For live debugging see https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/debugging

For best results either add a symbol server to Visual Studio as described above or use a debug build of Proton.

Getting A Debug Build Of Proton

Debug builds contain symbols and should be used for live debugging session.

1. Locate the version of proton you are using in your Steam Library (e.g. Proton Experimental), click on a cog and select properties.

2. In the "betas" tab select "debug - unstripped".

3. Chosen Proton version will now download and update and the symbols will be available.