Profile debug or release build?

Question

I need to do some memory profiling of a .NET Framework application. Should I use a debug or a release build?

Answer 1

You should profile the builds that are causing the problems. I'm assuming you are giving your users a Release build and so that's the one you should profile.

Answer 2

A release build, built with debug symbols.

That way there's no debug build overhead (like extra memory added after arrays for overrun detection), but you still have the names needed to associate addresses with variables.