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Questions tagged [pdb-files]

This PDB is Microsoft's "Program Database" format for debugging symbols, stored in files with a `.pdb` extension.

These are a kind of debugging symbols; you need them to get decent stack traces of MSVC-compiled native programs on Windows, but on .NET they are only really needed for source locations, so that the debugger can find the lines of source code that correspond with each part of the compiled code.

See also the program database article on Wikipedia.

If you want to use information from PDB files in a program, you could use either DbgHelp, a C-level API, or DIA, a COM API w/ .NET bindings.

This tag was split from , which is supposed to be empty now, but might have new questions where the asker didn't know what PDB was relevant (so it would be good to move them here when this is the one).

See also:

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What is a PDB file?

What is a PDB file and how can I exclude it from the release folder when I rebuild my solution?
Ata
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Release generating .pdb files, why?

Why does Visual Studio 2005 generate the .pdb files when compiling in release? I won't be debugging a release build, so why are they generated?
m.edmondson
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How to generate gcc debug symbol outside the build target?

I know I can generate debug symbol using -g option. However the symbol is embeded in the target file. Could gcc generate debug symbol outside the result executable/library? Like .pdb file of windows VC++ compiler did.
kcwu
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Preventing referenced assembly PDB and XML files copied to output

I have a Visual Studio 2008 C#/.NET 3.5 project with a post build task to ZIP the contents. However I'm finding that I'm also getting the referenced assemblies' .pdb (debug) and .xml (documentation) files in my output directory (and ZIP). For…
Jason Morse
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Cannot find or open the PDB file in Visual Studio C++ 2010

I use Visual Studio 2010 C++ and my project builds without errors but when I run it I get this. I am on Windows XP. 'Shaders.exe': Loaded 'C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\Visual Studio …
user1723768
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C# release version has still .pdb file

I want to deploy the release version of my application done in C#. When I build using the Release config, I still can see that .pdb files are produced, meaning that my application can be still debugged. This also means that some debug information is…
Abruzzo Forte e Gentile
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How do I use PDB files

I have heard using PDB files can help diagnose where a crash occurred. My basic understanding is that you give Visual studio the source file, the pdb file and the crash information (from Dr Watson?) Can someone please explain how it all works / what…
hamishmcn
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Why do I need ILK, PDB and EXP files?

I have downloaded some dll files and with it came also pdb, exp and ilk files. Now I need to know do I need to put them in my system file, or not and what is the purpose of each of them in the general?
Serenity Stack Hoolder 099
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ASP.NET publish trying to copy a non-existant file

I'm trying to publish an ASP.NET project in VS2010, and am getting the following error: Copying file bin\CKFinder.pdb to obj\Release\Package\PackageTmp\bin\CKFinder.pdb failed. Could not find file 'bin\CKFinder.pdb'. I had tried using a trial…
Ray K.
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Unable to create PDB file

For some reason this error started popping up today on one of my projects. Error 1 Unable to write to output file 'C:\MyProject\Release\MyProject.pdb': Unspecified error If I go into advanced compile options and change it to not generate and…
Ryan Smith
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How to remove warning LNK4099: PDB 'lib.pdb' was not found

LNK4099 warnings can occur when building on Windows during the link phase of a static compilation. E.g. when building using nmake and VC10 I get a stream of LNK4099 warnings like: libcurl_a_debug.lib(rc2_cbc.obj) : warning LNK4099: PDB 'lib.pdb' was…
Donal Lafferty
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Reading a .pdb file

I have a lot of files in .pdb format, some of them downloaded, but until now I can't use or read what's inside, so I'm looking for how to read and view the .pdb file format from MS Windows XP. Any of you that may know how to open it?
jones
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How can you change an age-mismatched PDB to match properly?

Our nightly build process was broken for a long time, such that it generated PDB files that were a few hours different in age than the corresponding image files. I have since fixed the problem. However, I would like to start using a symbol…
pj4533
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Why do my PDB's for my VB6 project not match the generated dll?

I have a VB6 project and have enabled it to generate pdb files (this shows how to do that). However I can't debug with them and when I check them with symcheck I get this output: >SYMCHK: MyFile.dll FAILED - MyFile.pdb mismatched or not…
Sam Holder
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How can I get a PDB file for the EntityFramework NuGet package?

I'm trying to debug a StackOverflow in the EntityFramework NuGet package (version 6.1.3). In order to see the stack frames I need the PDB file for EntityFramework.DLL and EntityFramework.SqlServer.DLL. However, I can't seem to get Visual Studio to…
ChaseMedallion
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