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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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cmake - extracting pdb files from object libraries

I am building my static library using the object libraries as shown using CMake 3.1.3. I have ADD_SUBDIRECTORY(A) ADD_SUBDIRECTORY(B) .... ADD_LIBRARY(mylib STATIC ${SOURCES} $ …
Nick
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Advantages and disadvantages of including PDB files with your release application

I've got a VB.net application. Currently the release version of the application is produced without a PDB file. This gives me error logs lacking useful details such as line numbers. I'm looking at including the PDB files with future builds but i'd…
zeocrash
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Does shipping PDB file make obfuscation useless in .net?

If I obfuscate a vb.net assembly using Eazfuscator with symbol names encryption turned on (so that I can use the Eazfuscator stack trace decoder), is this effectively undone if I ship the PDB file? I want to ship the PDB file so that I get line…
Guy
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What problems cause Visual Studio to say "Source information is missing from the debug information for this module"?

I'm working on a compiler for the CLR, and I mostly have it working. I'm trying to generate debug information, and I can get it to create an embedded PDB in the generated assembly where all the debug metadata looks right. When I load the assembly,…
Mason Wheeler
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What is the purpose of pdb files?

I Am using a third party library in one of my .NET projects. I notice there are a ton of pdb files included in the bin folder - one for each dll. What is the purpose of the pdb file?
AJM
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Cannot load symbols created with Ngen for Native Image DLLs

I am investigating a crashing program but cannot load symbols for native image DLLs in Visual Studio 2013. The application is 32-bit and uses .NET 4.0.30319. I confirmed this by checking what version of clr.dll is loaded into process from the…
krtzer
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pdb file is mising after PostSharp

I am using PostSharp version 2.1.6.4 (also tried latest version 2.1.7.35) and sometimes pdb file is missing and there is a pssym file in it's place. …
Aleksei Poliakov
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How can I debug this error: 'Debugging information for iisexpress.exe cannot be found or does not match'?

I've been working on an MVC 5 code first project for a few months and (seemingly) out of nowhere, Visual Studio is refusing to debug and giving me some strange errors. When I try to run the application Ctrl+F5 it builds ok but the browser never…
Martin Hansen Lennox
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Breakpoint in ASP.NET MVC Razor view will not be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document

I can't get a breakpoint in a Razor view to be hit in Visual Studio 2013 while debugging in IIS Express. This is the view and unreachable breakpoint: Looking at the modules I see that the latest PDB file has been loaded: And the folder…
Leniel Maccaferri
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Getting line number from pdb in release mode

Is it possible for the debugger (or the CLR exception handler) to show the line where the exception happened in Release mode using the pdb? The code, in release mode, is optimized and do not always follow the order and logic of the "original"…
NorthWind
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"Cannot find or open the PDB file" in VS Code

I see lots of questions and answers for this issue in Visual Studio, but no answers for VS Code. It's really annoying to see about a hundred of these messages in between my WriteLines. Is there a way to fix this issue for VS Code? Full console…
icebird76
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What does the PDB get me while debugging and how do I know it's working?

I have to use a third-party component without source code. I have the release DLL and release PDB file. Let's call it 'CorporateComponent.dll'. My own code creates objects from this DLL and calls methods on these objects. CorpObject o = new…
Anthony Mastrean
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How to find corresponding .pdb inside .NET assembly?

Apparently, when a .NET assembly is created the location of the corresponding .pdb file path is included inside. Link for reference: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241613.aspx How do I access this? I have tried using ILSpy to look inside…
Andrew Pham
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Check that pdb file matches to the source

I want to write check to proof that given assembly has valid pdb file near it and that the checksums stored in the pdb match the source checksums. The check used to be called as unit test on our CI server to prevent publishing binaries if the build…
Sinix
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fatal error LNK1201: error writing to program database - Visual Studio 2003

I get this error: fatal error LNK1201: error writing to program database every time I edit my code and build again in visual studio 2003. The issue is resolved if I restart VS2003 but I need to do this every time i build the project. I have been…
Rana
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