How do I change the locations of source files in a symbols file (pdb)

Question

Basically what I want to do it this: a pdb file contains a location of source files (e.g. C:\dev\proj1\helloworld.cs). Is it possible to modify that pdb file so that it contains a different location (e.g. \more\differenter\location\proj1\helloworld.cs)?

Answer 1

Sure. Move the source file in visual studio and rebuild the project to re-generate the .pdb.

Answer 2

If you're looking to be more generic about the paths embedded in a pdb file, you could first use the MS-DOS subst command to map a particular folder to a drive letter.

subst N: <MyRealPath>

Then open your project relative to the N: drive and rebuild it. Your PDB files will reference the source files on N:. Now it doesn't matter where you place that particular set of source files, so long as you subsequently call the root directory "N:" like you did when you built it.

This practice is recommended by John Robbins in his excellent book, Debugging Applications for Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Windows.

Answer 3

You can use the source indexing feature of the Debugging Tools for Windows, which will save references to the appropriate revisions of the files in your source repository as an alternate stream in the PDB file.

Answer 4

It is certainly possible, as On Freund has already pointed out. But if it is only so that the sources can be located and loaded during debugging, then a better way would be to set the source path correspondingly. Once set in a debugger, it will preemt all hard coded paths inside PDBs.

In windbg (for instance):

.srcpath+ path_to_source_root

or this (in case you're debugging remotely):

.lsrcpath+ path_to_source_root