Are there negative performance implication to having .pdb files present in bin directory?

Question

Is it a problem if I keep the .pdb files present in the bin directory? Are there any negative performance issues?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 20 '12 at 09:54

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if you have the .pdb but the exe/dll are anyway built in release, all optimizations have been included so it should not matter.

answered Jan 20 '12 at 09:54

Davide Piras

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '12 at 09:55

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These files are only used by the debugger, so if you're just running the application without debugging it, the files are ignored completely. So no, the presence of these files has no impact on performance.

answered Jan 20 '12 at 09:55

Thomas Levesque

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It can't give me line numbers in the stacktrace of logged exceptions? – Kees C. Bakker Jan 20 '12 at 10:08
@KeesC.Bakker, yes, forgot about that... but even then, the PDB files are only used when an exception occurs, so it shouldn't hurt performance – Thomas Levesque Jan 20 '12 at 10:21

Aristos · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-20T10:10:22.563

ones you have build the dll in release mode, and the asp.net is also running on release mode this have no effect on the performance.

This files are for the DEBUG, but what DEBUG ? The debug informations that you get on un-handled errors, like the calling stack, all the calling functions on stack and all the line number including the one of the throw error. Its useful if you wish to know where the error throw up, and they help to locate bug and errors very fast.

The informations that they give is the functions name, and the call positions inside the functions. We include them all, to help us with the errors.

You can also product similar informations and on the pages (aspx files) by including the compilerOptions="/D:TRACE" on web.config under the <compiler tag, in case that you have some errors on pages and you do not know in witch line they are.

Some more informations :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241903.aspx

Well... it might be useful when logging exceptions? It might provide the right line numbers? — Kees C. Bakker, Jan 20 '12 at 10:06
@KeesC.Bakker Yes ! exactly, very nice idea from MS, they are not affect performance and you get many informations on errors. — Aristos, Jan 20 '12 at 10:09

Are there negative performance implication to having .pdb files present in bin directory?

3 Answers3