How much information do pdb files contain? (C# / .NET)

Question

Is it wise to redistribute the pdb files along with a commercial application?

Occasionally, I'm using the stack trace to get a more detailed error reporting logs from the deployed applications; can this functionality be achieved without relying to those files?

Also, how much hints of the original source code does these files contain? Would it be easier to reverse-engineer my application using it?

Answer 1

It basically adds information for:

• All non-public types, interfaces, structures, classes
• Local variables in functions
• Source file names for relevant code and corresponding line numbers in source code.

which all combined makes reverse engineering very easy for native code.

Luckily you can create a stripped down version of your PDB files which only contains public information with /PDBSTRIPPED parameter.

Oh you edited to add C#/.NET, so I'm not sure if "PDBSTRIPPED" is applicable. However .NET applications are very easy to reverse engineer even without any symbol information. I wouldn't mind including them in a .NET project.

Answer 2

You could try using dia2dump to look at the contents.

Answer 3

The managed .pdb files contain the following information:

• The names of all local variables
• The names of all source code files and the mapping from IL instructions onto lines within those files.

Everything else is contained in the binary itself, including the names of all types, members and function arguments.

Source: PDB files: what every developer must know.