What are the implications of using /Zi vs /Z7 for Visual Studio C++ projects?

Question

Background

There are several different debug flags you can use with the Visual Studio C++ compiler. They are:

• (none)
  • Creat

Answer 1

One advantage of the old C7 format is that it's all-in-one, stored in the EXE, instead of a separate PDB and EXE. This means you can never have a mismatch. The VS dev tools will make sure that a PDB matches its EXE before it will use it, but it's definitely simpler to have a single EXE with everything you need.

This adds new problems of needing to be able to strip debug info when you release, and the giant EXE file, not to mention the ancient format and lack of support for other modern features like minrebuild, but it can still be helpful when you're trying to keep things as simple as possible. One file is easier than two.

Not that I ever use C7 format, I'm just putting this out there as a possible advantage, since you're asking.

Incidentally, this is how GCC does things on a couple platforms I'm using. DWARF2 format buried in the output ELF's. Unix people think they're so hilarious. :)

BTW the PDB format can be parsed using the DIA SDK.