How to do remote debugging on WinXP for an application build using Visual Studio 2013?

Question

I am wondering how we are suppose to use the remote debugger on a target machine with Windows XP for applications build using Visual Studio 2013.

It seems that Remote Debug Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 (and 2012) do not install on Windows XP, complaining that they need a newer Windows version. Microsoft download do not say a thing about requirements.

I guess there should be a way of doing it...

Answer 1

Here is the document on Visual Studio 2013 Compatibility and it does state that Remote Debugging and profiling tools are not available for the targeted platforms of XP and Vista.

Most likely the reason that the Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 do not run on XP is that XP does not support .NET 4.5.

Target your app for .NET 4 so you can run it on the XP platform, and use Visual Studio 2013 to do the majority of the coding and then use Visual Studio 2010 to do the remote debugging when needed. VS 2010 and 2013 can run side by side and the project formats are compatible so you should be able to go back and forth very easily.