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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:

646 questions
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Cannot find or open the PDB file message, pdb exists

I am using Visual Studio 2010, recently upgraded. The solution contains 25 projects, makes a dozen dll's and exe's. I am trying to debug a particular problem and I can't due to symbols not being loaded. I get the "Cannot find or open the PDB…
Vireche
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How to see what symbols are hosted on a Symbol Server?

I would like to inspect what symbols are available on a symbol server. I expect that a symbol server hosts more or less a collection of .pdb files for various applications. Tools like Visual Studio or WinDbg must know how to communicate with symbol…
Paweł Bulwan
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Glimpse.AspNet.pdb not loaded

I have an MVC application which uses Glimpse and for the last couple days I haven't been able to solve it. It throws a null reference at the start of each run. I have tried clearing caches, reinstalling the nuget packages, and tried clearing out the…
graham
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What is the format (schema) of .NET PDB files?

What is the format (schema) of .NET PDB files? I'd like to parse the information out of these files so that I can display the correct lines of code (line numbers) in a debugging application.
Sean
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VS2017 blocking on non-existing object files when debugging with pdb file

We are in the process of switching Visual C++ projects to the vc141 toolchain (VS 2017). We have encountered a problem where Visual Studio is unable to use a .pdb file whose source .obj files don't exist anymore (for example because they have been…
Quentin
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.PDB file not getting generated

I have a project which I need to debug in another solution. I'm trying to generate a PDB file, but its not getting generated. However, a .PSSYM file is getting generated. Things that I have already tried: Set the Configuration to Debug Set Build >…
RJP
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Copy NuGet .pdb to output directory

When I build an ASP.NET Core project it copies to the output directory only its own .pdb files and all .dlls of any installed NuGet packages. However, it does not copy their .pdb files. I have to select them manually from the…
t3chb0t
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Why does my Service Fabric code lock its own PDBs?

I am working on a Service Fabric application that contains a number of stateless services and a single stateful service. When I publish the first time, everything is fine and it's deployed to my local cluster. After this, if I try to package or…
Andyrooger
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How to remove build path from PDB-file

Is there a way to replace the build path that is being generated into pdb-Files? So that e.g. an error in the form of "exception in f:\xy\build-dir\foo.vb at line 123" is then given as "exception in something else\foo.vb at line 123"
ManOnAMission
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Merging debug info when merging static libraries

We build two static libraries, let's call them LibA and LibB. In Visual Studio, I've set up a solution with projectA & projectB, such that for projectB, under Configuration Properties -> Librarian -> General -> Additional Dependencies I've added…
Bwmat
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Difference between /Z7 and /Zi regarding 'debuggability'

I am managing a big application with about xxx source files (Visual Studio 2010). Since quite some years we compile our release builds with /Zi to get a PDB file which is stored in our symbol server. Over the years we noticed that our build scripts…
Patrick
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windbg: private pdb symbols

what is the difference between (private pdb symbols) and (pdb symbols)?
Bin Chen
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How do I determine the file and line # of a C# method from a symbols (.pdb) file?

pdb files contain symbol information for .NET assemblies. I'd like to read a pdb file in order to correlate methods with their file location. The data is contained within it but I can't seem to find a good description of how to get it out. I know…
Aaron Jensen
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Researching RPC calls of mspdbsrv

mspdbsrv.exe is a utility used internally by Microsoft to update PDB files. The compiler sends symbols updates to mspdbsrv through RPC, and mspdbsrv in turn updates the PDB file. I'm trying to understand how these updates look like. unfortunately…
Amir Gonnen
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Are there negative performance implication to having .pdb files present in bin directory?

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