<t>Because without the PDB files, it would be impossible to debug a "Release" build by anything other than address-level debugging. Optimizations really do a number on your code, making it very difficult to find the culprit if something goes wrong (say, an exception is thrown). Even setting breakpoints is extremely difficult, because lines of source code cannot be matched up one-to-one with (or even in the same order as) the generated assembly code. PDB files help you and the debugger out, making post-mortem debugging significantly easier.<br/>
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You make the point that if your software is ready for release, you should have done all your debugging by then. While that's certainly true, there are a couple of important points to keep in mind:<br/>
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You should also test and debug your application (before you release it) using the "Release" build. That's because turning optimizations on (they are disabled by default under the "Debug" configuration) can sometimes cause subtle bugs to appear that you wouldn't otherwise catch. When you're doing this debugging, you'll want the PDB symbols.<br/>
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Customers frequently report edge cases and bugs that only crop up under "ideal" conditions. These are things that are almost impossible to reproduce in the lab because they rely on some whacky configuration of that user's machine. If they're particularly helpful customers, they'll report the exception that was thrown and provide you with a stack trace. Or they'll even let you borrow their machine to debug your software remotely. In either of those cases, you'll want the PDB files to assist you.<br/>
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Profiling should always be done on "Release" builds with optimizations enabled. And once again, the PDB files come in handy, because they allow the assembly instructions being profiled to be mapped back to the source code that you actually wrote.<br/>
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You can't go back and generate the PDB files after the compile.* If you don't create them during the build, you've lost your opportunity. It doesn'<br/>
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