Reading a .pdb file

Question

I have a lot of files in .pdb format, some of them downloaded, but until now I can\'t use or read what\'s inside, so I\'m looking for how to read and view the .pdb file form

Answer 1

Nowadays, I highly recommend LLVM's PDB parser, llvm-pdbutil.

It is an excellent and feature rich PDB dumper and great to complement Microsoft's cvdump.
For details and documentation, see:

• LLVM on Windows now supports PDB Debug Info (LLVM Project Blog)
• llvm-pdbutil - PDB File forensics and diagnostics (LLVM Homepage)

Some useful commands for getting started:

• llvm-pdbutil dump -all your.pdb
• llvm-pdbutil bytes -syms your.pdb
• llvm-pdbutil -help

Getting llvm-pdbutil:

As per LLVM 7.0.0, the latest official release, llvm-pdbutil.exe is not distributed with the LLVM binaries, so it has to be built from source.

However, if you're OK with a non official, Windows 64-bit binary, my home-brewed llvm-pdbutil builds are available here (note Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable is required):

https://github.com/shaharv/llvm-pdbutil-builds/releases

Building llvm-pdbutil:

For building llvm-pdbutil from source on Windows, you'll have to get and setup LLVM build. Follow the instructions on https://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html.

There are some needed additions for PDB support, though. To summarize (for VS 2017):

• Clone the LLVM repo: git clone https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project.git
• cd llvm-project
• mkdir build && cd build
• If not running from Visual Studio console: set VSINSTALLDIR=c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\.
• cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017" -A x64 -Thost=x64 -DLLVM_ENABLE_DIA_SDK=ON ../llvm
• In Visual Studio, build the Tools/llvm-pdbutil project.

Answer 2

PDB Viewers (GUI)

• DotPeek

Portable PDB

• Tools

  • SourceLink: sourcelink print-urls Foo.pdb

• Programmatic Access

  • Microsoft.DiaSymReader.PortablePdb

Classic (non-portable) PDB

• Tools
  1. llvm-pdbutil: llvm-pdbutil dump -all Foo.pdb
  2. cvdump : cvdump Foo.pdb
  3. DBH: dbh.exe -v Foo.pdb dump
  4. PDBStr: pdbstr.exe -r -p:Foo.pdb -s:StreamName
• Programmatic Access
  • DIA SDK

Answer 3

You can use the DBH tool from Windows SDK.

&'C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows (x64)\dbh.exe' -v MySymbol.pdb dump

Answer 4

Microsoft released the source code of their PDB formats, so other compiler developers like the LLVM team can implement the PDB format easier.

https://github.com/Microsoft/microsoft-pdb/

To actually dump the output of a file, just use this:

https://github.com/Microsoft/microsoft-pdb/blob/master/cvdump/cvdump.exe

cvdump Whatever.pdb

Answer 5

If you mean PDB as in a "program database" that the debugger uses:

PDB files contain data about a file such as an EXE or DLL that is used to aid in debugging. There are public interfaces that allow you to extract data from the file. See examples here:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/jmstall/archive/2005/08/25/pdb2xml.aspx
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/bugs/PdbParser.aspx

If you mean PDB as in a Palm Pilot Database, then I know nothing about it, but the file format is available here:

• http://www.hotpaw.com/rhn/palm/pdb.txt