debugging information cannot be found or does not match visual studio's

Question

I copied an existing project and renamed the folder. Now I get this error when I try to compile the application

debugging information cannot be found

Answer 1

This problem has bothered me for a long time. AnT's anwser is very helpful. The main idea is Don't have any two pdb files have the same name, even they are not in the same directory.

This is my situation: I have tow projects name "FooBar" and "FooBarDll", the first one is an exe, and the second one is a dll. I set both projects Target Name to be "FooBar", so that they will generate "FooBar.exe" and "FooBar.dll" respectively.

Then I set

1. "General -> Intermediate Directory" to be "$(OutDir)\$(ProjectName)\"
2. "C/C++ -> Output Files -> Program Database File Name" to be "$(IntDir)$(TargetName).pdb"
3. "Linker -> Debugging -> Generate Program Database File" to be "$(OutDir)$(TargetName).pdb"

So I get these files:

1. Debug\FooBar.exe
2. Debug\FooBar.pdb //C++ pdb

3. Debug\FooBar\FooBar.pdb //Linker pdb

4. Debug\FooBar.dll

5. Debug\FooBar.pdb // C++ pdb again!
6. Debug\FooBarDll\FooBar.pdb // Linker pdb

My solution is replacing every "TargetName" with "ProjectName", then I will get:

1. Debug\FooBar.exe
2. Debug\FooBar.pdb //C++ pdb

3. Debug\FooBar\FooBar.pdb //Linker pdb

4. Debug\FooBar.dll

5. Debug\FooBarDll.pdb // C++ pdb
6. Debug\FooBarDll\FooBarDll.pdb // Linker pdb

Then there is no conflict!

Give C/C++ pdb a suffix may be better, like: "C/C++ -> Output Files -> Program Database File Name" to be "$(IntDir)$(ProjectName)_C.pdb"