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PDB files in Visual Studio bin\debug folders

Asked 2008-09-25T11:26:32.860
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I have a Visual Studio (2008) solution consisting of several projects, not all in the same namespace. When I build the solution, all the DLL files used by the top level project, TopProject, are copied into the TopProject\bin\debug folder. However, the corresponding .pdb files are only copied for some of the other projects. This is a pain, for example when using NDepend.

How does Visual Studio decide which .pdb files to copy into higher level bin\debug folders? How can I get Visual Studio to copy the others too?

References are as follows: all the DLL files are copied to a central location, without their PDB files. TopProject only has references to these copied DLL files; the DLL files themselves, however, evidently know where their PDB files are, and (most of them) get copied to the debug folder correctly.

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First off, never assume anything. Clean the solution, rebuild it in debug mode, and check to see if all PDB files are created. If not, that's your problem.

If they are created, and they're not all getting copied, you can get around this by creating a post build event that manually copies the PDB files to the desired locations. This is just a workaround, of course.

The only other thing I can think of is that your solution file has become corrupt. You can open your .sln as an XML file and examine the contents. Check the configuration for the projects that are acting as expected and compare them to those that aren't. If you don't see anything, you have to repeat this at the project level. Compare working .csproj (or whatever) project files and the non-working ones.

Edit in response to edit:

If you're just manually copying stuff around, then manually copy the PDF files as well. DLL files shouldn't "know" anything about PDB files, I believe. Just stick them in the destination directory and go have a cup of coffee. Relax.

answered 2008-09-25T11:44:57.980

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