Remote Mono and .NET Debugging Visual Studio Extensions

Remote Mono and .NET Debugging Visual Studio Extensions

We’re excited to announce two powerful new Visual Studio extensions that fill a long-standing gap in the in Visual Studio .NET developer ecosystem:

  • Remote Mono Debugger – for remotely debugging .NET Framework 4.x applications running on Linux using Mono
  • Remote .NET Debugger – for remotely debugging .NET Core (i.e., .NET 5 and later) applications on Linux

These extensions allow you to deploy, launch, and debug your applications on a remote Linux machine with a single motion—either by the click of a mouse or an F5 keystroke, just as you would when debugging an application locally on Windows.

Why We Built These Extensions

Visual Studio is a world-class IDE for .NET development, but it lacks built-in support for integrated remote debugging of Linux-hosted .NET applications—particularly those using Mono or .NET on remote machines.

This limitation forces many developers to resort to clunky workarounds: manually copying binaries to the target, launching apps via command line, and attaching debuggers manually—breaking the tight iterative loop of efficient software development.

These extensions finally provide a much more productive and convenient experience developing software for remote Linux targets like the ComfilePi.

1. Remote Mono Debugger: .NET Framework 4.x on Linux via Mono

Download and Documentation

Many .NET applications still rely on the .NET Framework (v4.x), and thanks to Mono, they can run on Linux—including Windows Forms (WinForms) applications. This is especially significant because running WinForms applications on Linux is not curently supported in .NET 5 and later, making Mono the only viable path for cross-platform WinForms development today.

However, debugging these Mono-based applications as they are running on a remote Linux target has not been possible without clunky workarounds—until now.

With the Remote Mono Debugger extension, you can:

  • Automatically deploy your WinForms application to the target
  • Launch it under the Mono debugger
  • Attach Visual Studio to it automatically
  • Step through code, set breakpoints, and inspect variables—just like with a local application

This extension is ideal for developers maintaining or migrating WinForms apps that need to run on Linux, enabling a familiar Visual Studio debugging workflow without the platform limitations of newer .NET versions.

Watch a full walkthrough of using the extension in the following video.

2. Remote .NET Debugger: .NET Core / .NET 5+ on Linux

Download and Documentation

The Remote .NET Debugger extension brings the same streamlined experience to modern .NET apps—.NET Core (i.e. .NET 5 and later).

  • Just press F5, and the extension will:
  • Deploy your .NET app to the remote Linux machine over SSH
  • Launch it on the remote target machine
  • Connect Visual Studio to the running process using the vsdbg remote debugger

Giving you full debugging capabilities in Visual Studio

Whether you're building a Blazor web application, a console tool, or a background service, this extension lets you debug it directly in the environment where it will actually run.

One Motion, One Goal

Both extensions are designed to work seamlessly with Visual Studio’s launch profiles, so you can define multiple deployment targets and switch between them as needed.

From the developer’s perspective, debugging a remote Linux application is now as easy as hitting F5—no scripting, no copying files manually, no frustrating workarounds.

Get Started

Both extensions are available now from the following links:

Setup is simple, and detailed documentation will help you configure your development environment and your remote target machine.

We hope these extensions will provide you with a much more productive experience developing .NET applications for your ComfilePi panel PCs.

Apr 29th 2025

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