Embed .pdb debug symbol information into an .exe file in Visual Studio

Question

I am experimenting an analysis tool that can analyze executable files with embedded debug symbol information in Windows. While trying this tool on several open source projects, I realize that most of the builds do not keep symbolic information in executable files. I am able to compile the source code with VS (2008), but the build normally keeps the debug information in a separated .pdb file, not in the .exe file (unfortunately I only want to read debug information from .exe file and not .pdb file :-().

Does anybody know a way to embed symbol debug information into a single .exe file using Visual Studio?

Answer 1

There is no built-in support in Visual Studio for this type of operation (at least for managed languages). The .PDB and .EXE files are created at the same time and have no option for embedding. I'm not even sure the .EXE format supports embedding PDB symbols although I could be wrong on this point.

The only course I can see is embedding the PDB as a resource in th e .EXE. However that would have to be a post build step since the two are built at the same time. And there is the potential for invalidating parts of the PDB if you modify the EXE after it's been built.

Is there a particular reason you're trying to do this? I'm imagining it's going to end up causing you a lot of pain as 1) it's not supported AFAIK and 2) the tool chain is geared towards looking for PDB in the same directory not within the .EXE. Deploying 2 files is a bit annoying at first but it's how its done at this point.

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure PDBs were always stand-alone files. VC++ used to have a switch that would cause it to emit (limited compared to PDB) symbol information to a "CodeView" .DBG file that by default was embedded in the EXE. However, that switch appears to no longer be supported in the newer (post 6.x ?) versions of the compiler.