The February release of JetBrains' Rider brings several additions to the IDE targeting .NET developers. Among the new features debuting in this release, dubbed build 17, is a new NuGet package manager UI, crash fixes, and debugging improvements. Unfortunately, one feature that is not present in this release of Rider is the ability to debug .NET Core based applications.
JetBrains has revealed that this piece of their debugging functionality relied on a NuGet package that has a licensing restriction preventing it from being used in a non-Microsoft product. InfoQ contacted JetBrains for comment and a source indicated that while "...[JetBrains is] committed to providing support for debugging for .Net Core for Rider" as soon as possible, a release date for its re-introduction is not available.
That said, many features have been improved in this release. Debugging has been enhanced with the additional inclusion of a new Hit Count option for use with breakpoints. This helps with debugging loops, as rather than having a breakpoint trigger with each loop iteration, a Hit Count can be set to indicate that the breakpoint should only occur when the loop has reached a certain value—providing a great time saver. The Build tool window has been refined to include both a raw text view of the build process, and a tree view to allow for easier focus on the error(s) you are interested in. Another improvement is to the code suggestions made by ReSharper, and using Alt + Enter can enable the developer to quickly index through the available corrections.
Rider is available for download now, but keep in mind that this is still pre-release software and should not be installed on critical systems. Binaries are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems. A full list of bugs fixed in this release is also available.
