What is a PDB file

Question

What is a PDB file and how can I exclude it from the release folder when I rebuild my solution

User · Answer

Program Debug Database file  pdb  is a file format by Microsoft for storing debugging information    When you build a project using Visual Studio or command prompt the compiler creates these symbol files    Check Microsoft Docs

User · Answer

A PDB file contains information for the debugger to work with  There s less information in a Release build than in a Debug build anyway  But if you want it to not be generated at all  go to your project s Build properties  select the Release configuration  click on  Advanced     and under  Debug Info  pick  None

User · Answer

PDB is an abbreviation for Program Data Base  As the name suggests  it is a repository  persistent storage such as databases  to maintain information required to run your program in debug mode  It contains many important relevant information required while you debug your code  in Visual Studio   for e g  at what points you have inserted break points where you expect the debugger to break in Visual Studio    This is the reason why many times Visual Studio fails to hit the break points if you remove the   pdb files from your debug folders  Visual Studio debugger is also able to tell you the precise line number of code file at which an exception occurred in a stack trace with the help of   pdb files  So effectively pdb files are really a boon to developers while debugging a program   Generally it is not recommended to exclude the generation of   pdb files  From production release stand-point what you should be doing is create the pdb files but don t ship them to customer site in product installer  Preserve all the generated PDB files on to a symbol server from where it can be used referenced in future if required  Specially for cases when you debug issues like process crash  When you start analysing the crash dump files and if your original   pdb files created during the build process are not preserved then Visual Studio will not be able to make out the exact line of code which is causing crash   If you still want to disable generation of   pdb files altogether for any release then go to properties of the project -  Build Tab -  Click on Advanced button -  Choose none from  Debug Info  drop-down box -  press OK as shown in the snapshot below     Note  This setting will have to be done separately for  Debug  and  Release  build configurations

User · Answer

I had originally asked myself the question  Do I need a PDB file deployed to my customer s machine    and after reading this post  decided to exclude the file    Everything worked fine  until today  when I was trying to figure out why a message box containing an Exception StackTrace was missing the file and line number information - necessary for troubleshooting the exception  I re-read this post and found the key nugget of information  that although the PDB is not necessary for the app to run  it is necessary for the file and line numbers to be present in the StackTrace string  I included the PDB file in the executable folder and now all is fine

User · Answer

A PDB file contains information used by the debugger  It is not required to run your application and it does not need to be included in your released version   You can disable pdb files from being created in Visual Studio  If you are building from the command line or a script then omit the  Debug switch

[c#] What is a PDB file?

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