Transferring files and directories

An important requirement for remote development is ability to transfer files and directories between local and remote host. WinGDB offers several options for that task. Transfer functions provided by WinGDB are divided in two groups: project/solution-scoped and directory-scoped transfers.

Project and solution scoped transfers

Those functions copy all files belonging to a project or solution in Visual Studio. In order to use them, you need to configure the following first:

Go to WinGDB/Properties on project or solution node in Solution Explorer, choose General tab and set the build or debug host for the project or solution. For file transfer, the build host login is used. If it is not set, the debug host is used instead.
From WinGDB menu choose Map source directories... option and specify a directory mapping of Synchronized type. The mapping should point to your project directory on local machine and to its counterpart on the remote machine.

Once you have entered login info and established directory mappings, you can transfer all files in the project or solution to remote machine by just right-clicking on the solution and choosing Transfer to remote from WinGDB menu. You do not need to specify any other information, this is one-click option.

The Transfer from remote option downloads files instead of uploading them. In other aspects, it is identical to Transfer to remote.

These options use mappings to determine where the files should be copied and will ignore files if:

they are not covered by any mapping.
they are covered by a Shared type of mapping, which means that the files reside on shared network volume and therefore should not be copied.
they belong to a project which is set up for local debugging (Windows or embedded system).

Transfer to remote will create missing directories on remote side. To be able to do this and copy actual files, it must have appropriate write permissions. You will be notified in case of errors during copy, including lack of permissions.

The transfer makes sense only for separate storage (synchronized type of mapping). If you have your project/solution files on a network shared volume (e.g. Samba), do not transfer. Windows will synchronize the files automatically for you.

Directory scoped transfers

If you want to transfer files which do not belong to current project/solution or are not withing any mapping, you can use directory-scoped transfer functions. These are not related to projects and mappings, you just specify source and target directory.

These functions are available from main WinGDB menu (not the project/solution one). Find the Transfer submenu and choose Download directory... or Upload directory... option.

The following dialog will appear in both cases:

There are the following parameters:

Remote login string: specifies the remote host address, user name and optional password.
Remote directory: specifies the directory on the remote host. It can be either source or destination directory, depending on function chosen. The green arrow shows the direction. Press the [...] button to browse.
Local directory: specifies the directory on the local host. It can be either source or destination directory, depending on function chosen. Press the [...] button to browse.
Filter: optional wildcard filter for copied file names. Only files matching the filter will be copied. If left empty, all files will be copied.

Table of Contents