How to generate PDB's for .net managed projects in release mode?

Cristian Diaconescu picture Cristian Diaconescu · Feb 25, 2009 · Viewed 13.5k times · Source

I know PDBs are generated for managed projects in .NET by giving the compiler the /debug argument. Is there a way to specify this in the VS (2005) GUI?

The only way I could get it to generate PDBs in release mode so far is to manually modify the .csproj file and to add :

<DebugSymbols>true</DebugSymbols>
<DebugType>full</DebugType>

under the 'release' settings:

<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ">

Another thing: I learned from MSDN here that the possible values for the DebugType tag are:

  • full
  • pdbonly
  • none

How do these values affect the compiler's behaviour?

Answer

mmx picture mmx · Feb 25, 2009

In VS2008, you can set the property using the project properties -> Build -> Advanced... -> Debug Info.