What are the symbols for in Visual Studio debugger

问题:

Every time I recompile my code Visual Studio debugger is looking for symbols it takes very long especially when I restart the app it has to load it all over again from the Microsoft server. Are the symbols necessary ? If not how to disable it or make the recompilation for debugging quicker ?

回答1:

Are the symbols necessary ?

Symbols simply allow Visual Studio debugger to map addresses to function names.

PDB file contains Symbol & line information. PDB file is generated when your build your project. You can opt for no PDB file by changing Visual Studio settings.

without PDB your program stack trace would look like this

0x00002130

with PDB

0x00002130 yourprogram!function

Microsoft has also built debug version of OS libraries such as KERNEL, GDI, etc., those are Windows debug symbols. Sometimes programmers need Windows debug symbols to investigate runtime errors. e.g. BSOD errors. Microsoft facilitates debug symbols download from their server.

@Hans suggested how you can turn off the settings.