I have included a dll file into my project. I reference it from a library folder where also resides dll's pdb file. When I compile I see both dll and pdb copied to main project's bin folder. On small projects this works wonderfully and I can debug into the dll with no problems. Sometimes, however, in larger projects, VS keeps asking for specific cs files even though their pdb file is included in the projects bin folder. That's ok if I can find those cs files, but it's annoying.
Why is Visual Studio sometimes asking for cs files and sometimes not?
It tries its best given the information it has, but sometimes that information is incomplete. When its ready to give up, it gives you the opportunity to provide the file, just in case you know better.
PDBs generally store the path to the file, as it was when msbuild was invoked to build the DLL. If the paths have changed (e.g. you're on a different machine to where the DLL was built, or just that files on the file system have moved) then the path information doesn't do it much good.
There is a process called source indexing that can embed enough information into the PDBs so that visual studio can re-locate the source files in your source control system (so that you get exactly the correct file as it was at the time of the build) but this is usually an extra step that has to be performed to modify the PDBs after the build has occurred.
Try this (from MSDN Forum)
Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> Symbols -> Empty Symbol Cache (button)
then
Tools -> Options -> Debugging General-> Enable Just My Code (checkbox)
and start debugging again. This should solve the problem if it was initiated by accidental third party components debug symbols that doesn't contains sources but storye only file paths.
Related
I did the following experiment: I created a statically linked C++ library solution MyLibrary (I took the code from the MSDN example: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235627.aspx.) and built it. Then I created another C++ solution MyConsoleApp, using the console application template in Visual Studio (2017). I copied the MyLibrary.lib file to the root of MyConsoleApp project and added MyLibrary.lib to Linker -> Input -> Additional Dependencies (also had to copy over the headers too of course). What I didn't do was to copy over the MyLibrary.pdb file.
I would've expected to get a linker warning about the missing .pdb file but this was not the case. Then I moved only MyConsoleApp to another machine and tried to build it again, this time getting a missing .pdb linker warning. It seems that Visual Studio is storing the .pdb files when building a solution somewhere on the machine and is able to use those .pdb files when linking other solutions on the same machine.
I would like to be able to disable this behaviour or to be able to remove the cached .pdbs so that I could be sure that when sharing work with other developers they won't get warnings that I'm not getting on my own machine.
Visual Studio doesn't cache the .pdb file. What happens here is that the absolute path to the original .pdb file is stored in the build outputs (.exe, .dll or .obj files) and Visual Studio is able to took it up based on that.
Check this answer for a way to prevent that: Remove PDB references from released file.
I'm working on a project that compiles with Visual Studio 2010. The build process for this project is outside of my control, and I can only modify source code, so there may be some setting that I'm not aware of that is causing this behavior.
However, I notice that the project that I'm working on, which has something on the order of a megabyte or two worth of source code, is being created with pdb several pdb files and some of them are larger than 100 MB.
I have a build-from source Linux system on another computer (Gentoo Linux) that has all of the debug symbols from all installed applications, automatically saved in /usr/lib/debug, and that entire directory is only 600MB. So, on Linux, 2GB of compressed source code turn out 600MB of debug information, but on Windows, 1-2MB turns out 100's of MB's of debug information?
Where does this huge difference in size come from?
By default Visual Studio will instruct to generate the PDB files with as much information as possible, you can configure it to generate smaller files through the settings of the project (the exact steps depend on the type of project, for C# you can find it under:
[ProjectProperties] -> build -> Advanced... -> Output / Debug Info.
Setting it to pdb-only will generate much smaller files, but will provide less help when debugging locally.
This confusing feature in ReSharper claims to let you browse external sources from within Visual Studio, see External Sources (ReSharper Web Help).
But, I don't understand what values to set for the folder substitution option. (Resharper - Options - External Sources - Advanced)
When I try navigating to source, I keep getting the message:
PdbNavigator: No sources found in debugging information for in assembly
(This is almost a duplicate of Stack Overflow question Visual Studio - Attach source code to reference, but that post did not explain HOW to attach external sources.
This is tricky, and I finally figured it out:
Click "Show current path settings and PDB files binding" and look at where the PDB points to for source.
Add a folder substitution where the source code is where the PDB says the source code is (probably a path not on your computer, but on the system that compiled the DLL file and PDB). Set the target to the source you downloaded.
Here's a screenshot:
I have a VS 2008 C++ project which uses a third-party library (Open Scene Graph).
When i start debugging the project, each time a function from this external library is called, the debugger just jumps over it, because (obviously) the debugger has no .cpp files where to look up the code. It only jumps into header files which are linked to my project because those files exist and their location is known. So, i can only see what's going on in those small inline functions, but not in the bigger functions whose implementation is in .cpp files which i don't have.
I need is to somehow step thru the source code of these third-party dlls/libs the same way I do with my own code.
I downloaded the the whole source code of that library and compiled it on my machine. Now i have the dlls and libs, and the .pdb files, and the .cpp files, too. But how exactly do I tell Visual Studio the locations of the .cpp files of the third-party library, so that it knows, that when i want to step into a function coming from a .dll or a .lib it opens the corresponding .cpp file (even though it's not in my project and is located is a completely different folder)?
Is this at all possible?
I tried copying the .libs, the .dlls (debug versions), .pdbs both to the locations which my Project uses and "Additional Library Directories" and to the project's folder but this must be not enough.
Add the dir with the PDB files to Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> Symbols.
Is there a way to update the PDB file with the new source location ? I have a project which links to some libraries which are built on another machine and are debug build with the PDB file. I cannot put a breakpoint in the files which are compiled in the libs. These libs take more than 4 hours to build so I dont want to buid them on my machine. Is there a way where i can make the compiler use the new source paths. I am using VS 2005 pro c++.
Thanks
Amit
Instead of modifying the .pdb files to adjust to where you have your source, you should be able to make the debugger see the new source path. Look here for instructions on doing this in Visual Studio, and here for instructions on doing this in WinDbg.
Another this StackOverflow question: Best Visual Studio 2008 Debugging Tutorial.
Is the debugger picking up the .pdb files from the wrong location? Do you have a copy of the .pdb files that match the binaries (i.e. .exe, .dll) that you are executing? Keep in mind that the .pdb files can only be used if they were created at the same time as the exact binaries you are executing.
Try the following:
Rename the (stale) .pdb file that the debugger wants to load, so the debugger will no longer try to pick it up.
Go to Tools->Options->Debugging->Symbols and add the symbol file (.pdb) location to the list.
If the debugger is already attached, right click on the module in the "Modules" list and click "Load symbols". This will re-load the symbols from the path you entered.
Also, if you know the code is exactly the same, but your .pdb file doesn't match the binaries you are using because they were created during different builds, try un-checking the following checkbox:
Tools->Options->Debugging->Require source files to exactly match the original version