Do you have to deploy the .pdb file with compiling under release?

Question

Do you have to deploy the .pdb file with compiling under release?

Why does it even compile a .pdb when you do a release build anyway?

Answer 1

No you do not need to deploy them.

As to why they are even built in release. A PDB file really has a couple of uses but the primary ones (at least for me) are

1. Debugging
2. Profiling

Both of these tasks are validly done on release binaries which is why release builds include a PDB. In fact, when debugging Watson dumps it's 100% of the time against a release build. Without a PDB I would have to resort to looking through dissasembly :(