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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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Source information missing from the debug information for this module - PDB successfully loaded

Visual Studio loads the correct PDB file, but can't find source information for anything in the solution. Things I've tried: Clean, reboot, regenerate project (CMake), rebuild Check the Modules window to ensure the PDB is loaded (it is) Mess with…
etodd
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how to generate pdb files for Release build with cmake flags?

I am generating a visual studio solution using cmake. And now I want to generate pdb files for a Release build. (Why? because I want to have the symbols in case that the user found some bug) I tried by setting the following flags without…
Eze Velez
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Visual Studio 2010 "Cannot find or open the PDB file"

I try to debug a program in Visual Studio 10, but I have a problem with breakpoints. I put *.pdb files corresponding to the *.dll files to the same directory. But while checking modules, I see that each DLL file is signed as Cannot find or open the…
YAKOVM
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Debugging release build on a client's machine

We have a native C++ Win32 .exe built using Visual Studio 2005 that works flawlessly on all the machines we've tested in-house on (XP 32-bit, Vista 32-bit & Windows 7 64-bit). But of course, it crashes repeatedly on a client's 32-bit Vista…
Praetorian
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How do I embed source into pdb, and have debugger(s) use it?

NOTE: my target concern is C# targeting the CLR with regular MSIL in case there's something that works for that but not in the more general case(s). Some existing source debugging support examples There was recently a release of the Sourcepack…
James Manning
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"PDB format is not supported" with .NET portable debugging information

The last couple of days I've been hunting down a problem - with the conclusion: My Visual Studio 2017 debugger can't work with PDBs in "portable" format in .NET Framework projects. With portable format I mean going to a project's settings, then to…
Sebastian Krysmanski
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LNK1201 Visual C++ 2010 Large project failing to generate PDB

We have gone through the points listed on MSDN WRT to this error ( except for #5 ). Three different people on different machines are getting the same problem. The PDB is created, but fails somewhere in the middle. Details: 67 static…
Zac
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Visual Studio 2008 - Add Reference

When adding a DLL as a reference to an ASP.Net project, VS2008 adds several files to the bin directory. If the DLL is called foo.dll, VS2008 adds foo.dll.refresh, foo.pdb and foo.xml. I know what foo.dll is :-), why does VS2008 add the other three…
James Sun
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wntdll.pdb not loaded - Can't see the exception

Sometimes when I quit my application (SaviHOST running a DLL that I'm making) I show this screen: Unfortunately I don't know where the error happens, because it just load that screen, not the line where the exception is made. How can I fix this?…
markzzz
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CSC: error CS0041: Unexpected error writing debug information -- 'Operation is not supported on this platform.'

Just downloaded Visual Studio Professional for Mac and I cannot seem to build anything as I always get the same error: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/4.8.0/lib/mono/xbuild/14.0/bin/Microsoft.CSharp.targets (CoreCompile target) -> CSC:…
Slee
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How to include pdb files in MSI installer to deploy along side the rest of the app?

How to include pdb files in MSI installer to deploy along side the rest of the app? I want to keep the line numbers and full stack trace in error logs we generate. Update The line numbers of the code are not reported in the stacktrace unless you…
m3ntat
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Embed pdb into assembly

I want my application to be distributable as a single .exe file but I want to be able to get nice error reports with source code line numbers (the application simply sends email with exception.ToString() and some additional information when…
Konstantin Spirin
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Is it possible to (re)create a PDB file after a DLL is made

I have the DLL and I have the exact sources used to create the DLL. I want our local symbol server to work when we get a dump file from customers. (Updating the DLL at the customer site can't be done before the next patch/release of our product)
Arve
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Where to find the pdb files for Qt's dll?

I am debugging a Qt application. Where can I find Qt's debug dll? I am using vs2010 on windows. It says it needs the pdb file for many .dll from Qt.
Nyaruko
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Debugging cross-compiled code: Linux->Windows

I'm cross-compiling a project from Linux to target Windows (using mingw). The output is a DLL and p-invoking into it from C# works, but debugging is very difficult. The build outputs a .o file, which can provide symbols to gdb, but basically all I…
RandomEngy
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