Common reasons for bugs in release version not present in debug mode

Question

What are the typical reasons for bugs and abnormal program behavior that manifest themselves only in release compilation mode but which do not occur when in debug mode?

Answer 1

You'd need to give a lot more information, but yes, it's possible. It depends what your debug version does. You may well have logging or extra checks in that that don't get compiled into a release version. These debug only code paths may have unintended side effects which change state or affect variables in strange ways. Debug builds usually run slower, so this may affect threading and hide race conditions. The same for straight forward optimisations from a release compile, it's possible (although unlikely these days) that a release compile may short circuit something as an optimisation.