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If debug information is stored in a program database (not as part of an executable), is there any reason not to always build with it (e.g., MSVC's /Zi)?
In CMake, the default configurations are, "Release", "Debug", "RelWithDebInfo", and "MinSizeRel". Is there a reason not to only use "Debug" and "RelWithDebInfo" (perhaps renamed to "Release")?
Does it have any impacts on the size or performance of the code? Is the answer different for gcc or clang than it is for Visual C++?
Update
I did come across these posts that are similar:
However, neither of these get to the question of Release vs. RelWithDebInfo.
Yes. I could do a test on an executable with Release vs. RelWithDebInfo. That would definitely give me the answer about the size of the code, but would be very difficult to conclude that it has NO impact on performance if my test case showed similar performance. How would I know if I exercised aspects of the language that might be impacted by the change? That is, empirical testing could produce a false negative.
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You can now debug your release build application. To find a problem, step through the code (or use Just-In-Time debugging) until you find where the failure occurs, and then determine the incorrect parameters or code.
A debug build of your code will add a lot (potentially) of extra debug information and mostly disables any optimizations. As such a debug build is always larger and slower than a release build. Debug builds should only be used for development.
By default, Debug includes debug information in the compiled files (allowing easy debugging) while Release usually has optimizations enabled. As far as conditional compilation goes, they each define different symbols that can be checked in your program, but they are language-specific macros.
Debug Mode: In debug mode the application will be slow. Release Mode: In release mode the application will be faster. Debug Mode: In the debug mode code, which is under the debug, symbols will be executed. Release Mode: In release mode code, which is under the debug, symbols will not be executed.
Releasing with debug info is mandatory for real-life development. When shit happens your primary tool would be a crash dump analysis that would be rather pointless without debug information. Note that this does not imply shipping debug info with product.
As for "little differences" between vc++ and gcc I would like to mention that by default vc++ emits debug information in a separate file while gcc will squeeze it into executable. It is possible to separate debug information on gcc as well, however doing so is not as convenient and requires some extra steps.
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