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I have read a couple of posts for instance... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adamroot/archive/2009/06/17/source-server-and-symbol-server-features-in-team-foundation-server-2010-beta-1.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimlamb/archive/2009/06/15/symbol-and-source-server-in-tfs-2010.aspx

From what I have read these are both useful server applications to setup for better debugging support when dealing with older versions of applications that require analysis.

In the first link the msdn blogger mentions that while both are useful they are seperate and don't depend on each other. Why would I want one and not the other? Do they perform two distinctly different tasks or do they overlap?

happy for others to edit Q or ask me to edit if this isn't clear enough.

Anonymous Type
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2 Answers2

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Most of the time, you want both. They do not overlap. In short

  • Symbol server gives you function names and line numbers
  • Source server gives you the source at a point in time

But there are debugging scenarioss when sources are not available, like for the Windows DLL and executables for example. So it is usefull to have them separate, even if it comes with it's own agravation.

In Microsoft's Debugging tools for windows, there is a command symfix (or symfix+) that adds Microsoft's symbol server to your configuration automaticaly.

Community
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ixe013
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  • nice. do I run Symfix on the Symbol server in my TFS farm? or is that on each VS /eclipse client? – Anonymous Type Jul 13 '11 at 03:20
  • symfix is a windbg command. But there is the equivalent symchck tool. More info here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311503 – ixe013 Jul 13 '11 at 03:44
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Every server has different functionality and objectives

Source server:

You can get any version of your source code anytime, branch and merge and so on.

Symbol server:

*.pdb files which used in the debugging, so you can use this *.pdb so you can debug the application that already running, that's mean to debug an old release version you don't need to get the source control of this version to start debug it, you just run the build of the needed release and get the *.pdb from the symbol server so you can debug old build without needed to source code By symbol server you don’t need source code anymore to debug old version of your release, you just debug them directly, but if you don’t have symbol sever, you will need to get the right version from the source server and build the application on debug configuration and start debug your application

I hope I could deliver my point.

Thanks

Mohamed.Radwan -MVP
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