Generating Symbols in release binaries with Visual Studio

Question

Update: I posted a comment on John Robbins blog about the. He wrote a response here:

http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2009/06/19/do-pdb-files-affect-performance.aspx

The project I am working on does not build symbols for its release binaries, and I would like to change this.

Some info:

• Mostly C++ code base, some C#.
• Compiled under VS2k5, will be moving to VS2k8 Team System.
• Time critical software.
• Must have optimizations enabled.
• Source code is provided to customer so full symbols are fine.

What are the best command line switches to generate what I need, and what, if any, performance hits am I going to take?

Also, are there any "Gotchas" to be aware of?

Answer 1

Generating debug symbols (ie PDB files) is just creating an external file that a debugger can reference when looking at your code in memory. It doesn't affect the code that the compiler or linker generate (sort of like generating a .MAP file).

Now if you're talking about defining _DEBUG in a release build, that's a whole different question.

Answer 2

Update: I posted a comment on John Robbins blog about the. He wrote a response here:

http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2009/06/19/do-pdb-files-affect-performance.aspx

I found the following link on microsofts website: Generating and Deploying Debug Symbols with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0

This link pertains to Visual C++ 6, but I am assuming these instructions are the same for Visual C++ 8(2005) and 9(2008).

The information it gives is very similar to the link provided by TheBlack but more in-depth.