Designer Debugging in WinRT

Introduction

Following are the steps to debug the Visual Studio designer for WinRT Projects.

1. Open the WinRT Project that designer needs to debug:

   

2. Note the XDesProc process id from the TaskManager as shown in the below image:

   
3. Open the same solution in another window:

   

4. Note the New XDesProc process id from the taskmanager that the designer process needs to debug:

   

5. Go to Debug->Attach To Process in Visual Studio 2012 from the FirstSolution:

   

6. Select the new XDesProc process from the Window:

   

7. Before clicking Attach, it is important to change the Attach To ->Managed 4.0,4.5 from the Select Button:

   

8. Boom! Your BreakPoints in the FirstSolution got hit:

   

   

Now you can play with the designer.