Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow

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:

646 questions
13
votes
2 answers

Symbols for ngen-ed assemblies are not loaded

I am trying to decode the following call stack line from procmon: 29 System.Management.Automation.ni.dll System.Management.Automation.ni.dll + 0x897a0a 0x7fee2ae7a0a …
Sebastian
  • 3,764
  • 21
  • 28
13
votes
2 answers

A matching symbol file was not found (Cannot find/open pdb file)

The debug point is not getting enabled when this module gets loaded. So I thought of manually loading its debug symbols .pdb file from "Debug/obj" folder. In this case I am getting below error "A matching symbol" file was not found in this folder…
Ram
  • 3,887
  • 4
  • 27
  • 49
13
votes
5 answers

Embed .pdb debug symbol information into an .exe file in Visual Studio

I am experimenting an analysis tool that can analyze executable files with embedded debug symbol information in Windows. While trying this tool on several open source projects, I realize that most of the builds do not keep symbolic information in…
Anh Cuong
  • 131
  • 1
  • 3
13
votes
2 answers

What do directory names like D0C3BDDD4ADD4E87B2B5E803303B8D772 in Visual Studio symbol cache mean?

I have a symbol cache directory set to D:\symbols in Visual Studio options: Within this directory Visual Studio creates a hierarchy with top-level directories matching PDB file names (e.g. ole32.pdb), on the next level are one or more directories…
Piotr Shatalin
  • 443
  • 3
  • 8
12
votes
1 answer

How can I inspect variable values while debugging MSVC ABI Rust programs?

I've downloaded the MSVC ABI version of Rust 1.7.0 and followed the guessing game section from the docs. I notice that the builds use the native toolchain (Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 in my case) and therefore generate native PDBs (debugging…
cynic
  • 5,305
  • 1
  • 24
  • 40
12
votes
7 answers

Any recommended VC++ settings for better PDB analysis on release builds

Are there any VC++ settings I should know about to generate better PDB files that contain more information? I have a crash dump analysis system in place based on the project crashrpt. Also, my production build server has the source code installed…
Brian R. Bondy
  • 339,232
  • 124
  • 596
  • 636
12
votes
2 answers

"Cannot find or open the PDB file" from Visual Studio 2013 RC

First time user of C#, but I have experience with Java. I wrote a Hello World program to initiate myself, but I have been getting this cannot find or open the PDB file error when compiling. 'ConsoleApplication4.vshost.exe' (CLR v2.0.50727:…
theGreenCabbage
  • 5,197
  • 19
  • 79
  • 169
12
votes
5 answers

Can Delphi 5 generate a .PDB file that VS can use?

We've got this large application written in Delphi 5, and development is ongoing to this day. There is research going on into migrating to newer versions, but so far there is no success, as some 3rd party components have not been updated in ages and…
Vilx-
  • 104,512
  • 87
  • 279
  • 422
11
votes
1 answer

Symbol status showing "Skipped Loading" for dll in modules window?

I've recently upgraded some solution(s) to Visual studio 2013. All went OK apart from one which now generates the: Symbol for the modules 'name' were not loaded. ...error every time I run it. When I look in the modules debug window I can see…
Liam
  • 27,717
  • 28
  • 128
  • 190
11
votes
1 answer

Loading Specific Symbols from a Symbol Server in Visual Studio that match a regex

We have a symbol server that hosts our PDBs for our internal libraries. All DLLs that are published begin with prefix "ABC" I would like to configure Visual Studio to Load only specified modules that match ABC.* In Tools -> Options -> Debugging ->…
badazzhindu
  • 913
  • 7
  • 21
11
votes
2 answers

Disable C++ PDB generation from the IDE

We need to surpress generation of debug symbols. The options availble under project properties/ configuration properties / c/c++ / general / debug information format, are equivalent to /Z7, /Zi and /ZI - I can't find a way to omit the /Zx flag…
Ofek Shilon
  • 14,734
  • 5
  • 67
  • 101
11
votes
4 answers

PDB files in Visual Studio bin\debug folders

I have a Visual Studio (2008) solution consisting of several projects, not all in the same namespace. When I build the solution, all the DLL files used by the top level project, TopProject, are copied into the TopProject\bin\debug folder. However,…
Joel in Gö
  • 7,460
  • 9
  • 47
  • 77
10
votes
1 answer

How to get source/line number for IL instruction using Mono.Cecil

I'm using Mono.Cecil to write a simple utility that looks for type/method usage within .NET assemblies (ex. calling ToString on enums). I am able to get find the method, but it would be cool to display the source/line information to the user. Is…
Filip Frącz
  • 5,881
  • 11
  • 45
  • 67
10
votes
4 answers

How do I merge multiple PDB files?

We are currently using a single command line tool to build our product on both Windows and Linux. Si far its works nicely, allowing us to build out of source and with finer dependencies than what any of our previous build system allowed. This buys…
bltxd
  • 8,825
  • 5
  • 30
  • 44
10
votes
3 answers

How do you use SymLoadModuleEx to load a PDB file?

I'm trying to call SymLoadModuleEx to load the symbols from a PDB file and then use SymFromAddr to look up symbols from that PDB. However, I can't figure out what to pass for the parameters BaseOfDll and DllSize -- the documentation explicitly says…
Adam Rosenfield
  • 390,455
  • 97
  • 512
  • 589
1 2 3
…
42 43