> Hi all,
>
> We are trying to debug an assembly which was built in debug
> configuration on our build server.  The output window of visual
> studio indicates that no symbols are being loaded for the assembly.
> However, when the PDB file is copied alongside the dll, the symbols
> load ok. We were a little confused, because we had already been
> debugging this assembly WITHOUT copying the pdb file.
> What I discovered was that when the assembly is built on the machine
> that is being used to attach to and debug the process, the symbols
> load fine.  When the assembly is built on another workstation,
> whether that be the build server or another developers workstation,
> the pdb file needs to sit alongside the dll for the symbols to load.
> I did a binary compare of the 2 assemblies (same source, different
> build workstations), and there is only something like 23 bytes
> difference. Questions:
> 1. Can anyone please shed some light on what is going on here?!
> 2. Are there some good articles on what is loaded as "symbols". i.e.
> more insight into what is going on at a lower level here.
> 3. It seems debug information is embedded into the debug version dll
> file, and also externally stored in the pdb file. Otherwise how can
> the debug dll be debugged at all without a pdb file?

"Carl Daniel [VC++ MVP]" <cpdaniel_remove_this_and_nospam@mvps.org.nospam>
wrote in message news:ukBsOVM%23GHA.3348@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Bardo wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> We are trying to debug an assembly which was built in debug
>> configuration on our build server.  The output window of visual
>> studio indicates that no symbols are being loaded for the assembly.
>> However, when the PDB file is copied alongside the dll, the symbols
>> load ok. We were a little confused, because we had already been
>> debugging this assembly WITHOUT copying the pdb file.
>> What I discovered was that when the assembly is built on the machine
>> that is being used to attach to and debug the process, the symbols
>> load fine.  When the assembly is built on another workstation,
>> whether that be the build server or another developers workstation,
>> the pdb file needs to sit alongside the dll for the symbols to load.
>> I did a binary compare of the 2 assemblies (same source, different
>> build workstations), and there is only something like 23 bytes
>> difference. Questions:
>> 1. Can anyone please shed some light on what is going on here?!
>> 2. Are there some good articles on what is loaded as "symbols". i.e.
>> more insight into what is going on at a lower level here.
>> 3. It seems debug information is embedded into the debug version dll
>> file, and also externally stored in the pdb file. Otherwise how can
>> the debug dll be debugged at all without a pdb file?
>
> Debug info is stored in the PDB file only.  The brinary (DLL or EXE)
> contains the absolute path to the location where the PDB file was when the
> DLL was built.  The debugger tries to load the PDB file from that absolute
> path or from the same directory as the DLL/EXE.  The DLL/EXE also contains
> a timestamp which is replicated in the PDB file - if the timestamps don't
> match, the PDB won't be loaded.
>
> -cd
>

> Hi Carl,
>
> thanks for the reply. That fits in with what we are experiencing.
> Although I can envisage a number of issues when trying to debug
> assemblies that are deployed via script to the local GAC from the
> build server! This means we will need to manually copy the PDB file
> for each assembly GAC'd, which also means determining the version to
> know where to copy the file based on the GAC directory structure.
> Is there some common way of doing this sort of thing?
> I saw that you can have a "Symbol Server" and point your VS2005
> solution at a common directory etc. Not sure what happens though when
> you end up with symbols on both local machine (from debugging
> sessions) and also on the build server...
> Do you have any thoughts on this at all? Or am I going down the wrong
> path?