How to tell if a .NET application was compiled in DEBUG or RELEASE mode?

Alex picture Alex · Oct 11, 2008 · Viewed 23.3k times · Source

I have an application installed on my computer. How do I find out if it was compiled in DEBUG mode or not?

I've tried to use .NET Reflector, but it does not show anything specific. Here is what I see:

// Assembly APPLICATION_NAME, Version 8.0.0.15072
Location: C:\APPLICATION_FOLDER\APPLICATION_NAME.exe
Name: APPLICATION_NAME, Version=8.0.0.15072, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null
Type: Windows Application

Answer

ZombieSheep picture ZombieSheep · Oct 11, 2008

I blogged this a long time ago, and I don't know if it still valid or not, but the code is something like...

private void testfile(string file)
{
    if(isAssemblyDebugBuild(file))
    {
        MessageBox.Show(String.Format("{0} seems to be a debug build",file));
    }
    else
    {
        MessageBox.Show(String.Format("{0} seems to be a release build",file));
    }
}    

private bool isAssemblyDebugBuild(string filename)
{
    return isAssemblyDebugBuild(System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile(filename));    
}    

private bool isAssemblyDebugBuild(System.Reflection.Assembly assemb)
{
    bool retVal = false;
    foreach(object att in assemb.GetCustomAttributes(false))
    {
        if(att.GetType() == System.Type.GetType("System.Diagnostics.DebuggableAttribute"))
        {
            retVal = ((System.Diagnostics.DebuggableAttribute)att).IsJITTrackingEnabled;
        }
    }
    return retVal;
}