Where will Debug.WriteLine in C# output to when build release?

Question

I put a lot of Debug.WriteLine in my code for debug purposes. When I am ready to build for release, will these Debug.Write influence the release build, and where do they output to?

Answer 1

Debug.WriteLine is annotated with the Conditional attribute. (see MSDN)

The ConditionalAttribute tells the compiler not to generate that code unless the DEBUG flag is supplied.

Answer 2

From MSDN: "The ConditionalAttribute attribute is applied to the methods of Debug. Compilers that support ConditionalAttribute ignore calls to these methods unless "DEBUG" is defined as a conditional compilation symbol. Refer to a compiler's documentation to determine whether ConditionalAttribute is supported and the syntax for defining a conditional compilation symbol."

So if your release configuration does not include DEBUG symbol the Debug.WriteLine calls will be omitted during compilation and there will be no output.