Slides from a presentation on managing Windows debugging symbols files.

1. A Great Clash of
Symbols
Managing and Using Symbol Files
for .NET Applications
Presented by
Gregory M. Sohl

2. Agenda
Symbols
Visual Studio Symbol Usage
Other Tools Symbol Usage
Places to Store Symbols
Keeping Symbols with NuGet Packages

3. Symbols
Produced by .NET compilers
Stored in PDB files
Contain – much less than for native
 Source file names
 Line # references
 Local variable names
 Only the info that is not already contained in
managed assemblies

4. Symbol File Creation
Created at compile time
A unique GUID is embedded with each
compile
 In the assembly
 In the PDB
Mismatched assembly + PDB

5. Kinds of Symbol Files
Private / Debug
 Debug Info = full
 Full debugging experience
Public
 Debug Info = pdb-only
 Examine stack traces, dumps, Intellitrace
Generally, don’t do “full” for release builds
due to performance hit

6. Keeping Symbol Files
Symbols are as important as source!
 Use with dumps from QA/production
 Use with Intellitrace from QA/production
Without matching Symbols files, working
with either much more difficult

7. What to Keep
Local developer builds?
Builds released to QA?
Builds released to production?
Builds released to customers?

8. How VS Finds Symbols
It uses a search path
 Folder relative to the binary
c:MyDirsymbolsdll
c:MyDirdll
c:MyDir
Configured paths, cache and Symbol Server
 Environment Variable: _NT_SYMBOL_PATH
 Tools / Options / Debugging / Symbols
List of Search Paths

9. Supported Search Paths
Local drives
Network drives
Symbol server
 Ex.
srv*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Local cache (highly recommended)
 Ex. cache*c:MySymbols;

10. Simple Search Path Setup in VS

11. DEMO
VS DEBUGGING

12. Other Tools Symbol Usage
WinDbg / SOS – Low level debugger
Intellitrace – Runtime event recorder

13. Keeping Your Symbols
Application & Library Symbols
 Store them with your release on a file share
 Copy them back into place as needed for
debugging

14. Keeping Your Symbols
Put them on a Symbol Server
 symstore – part of the Windows SDK
Reference stored symbols via file path
 SymbolSource.Server.Basic
http interface to symstore
Stores NuGet packages & symbols
bit.ly/SymbolSourceServerBasic
 NuPeek
Stores NuGet packages & symbols
https://bitbucket.org/thinkbeforecoding/nupeek

15. Keeping Your Symbols
TFS Build System
 Can store source, binaries and symbols
 Good blog post:
http://bit.ly/TFSSourceSymbols

16. My Goal
Move from CruiseControl.NET to TFS
Builds
Use TFS Build Management
 For
Binaries
Symbols
 On
All QA Builds with retention for 2-3 months
All Release Builds with retention as long as they
are in use.