A Great Clash of Symbols

Managing and Using Symbol Files

for .NET Applications

Presented by

Gregory M. Sohl

Agenda

Symbols

Visual Studio Symbol Usage

Other Tools Symbol Usage

Places to Store Symbols

Keeping Symbols with NuGet Packages

Symbols

Produced by .NET compilers

Stored in PDB files

Contain – much less than for native Source file names Line # references Local variable names Only the info that is not already contained in

managed assemblies

Symbol File Creation

Created at compile time

A unique GUID is embedded with each compile In the assembly In the PDB

Mismatched assembly + PDB

Kinds of Symbol Files

Private / Debug Debug Info = full Full debugging experience

Public Debug Info = pdb-only Examine stack traces, dumps, Intellitrace

Generally, don’t do “full” for release builds due to performance hit

Keeping Symbol Files

Symbols are as important as source! Use with dumps from QA/production Use with Intellitrace from QA/production

Without matching Symbols files, working with either much more difficult

What to Keep

Local developer builds?

Builds released to QA?

Builds released to production?

Builds released to customers?

NO

YES

YES

YES

How VS Finds Symbols

It uses a search path Folder relative to the binary

c:\MyDir\symbols\dll

c:\MyDir\dll

c:\MyDir

Configured paths, cache and Symbol Server Environment Variable: _NT_SYMBOL_PATH Tools / Options / Debugging / Symbols

List of Search Paths

Supported Search Paths

Local drives

Network drives

Symbol server Ex. srv*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

Local cache (highly recommended) Ex. cache*c:\MySymbols;

Simple Search Path Setup in VS

DEMOVS DEBUGGING

Other Tools Symbol Usage

WinDbg / SOS – Low level debugger

Intellitrace – Runtime event recorder

Keeping Your Symbols

Application & Library Symbols Store them with your release on a file share Copy them back into place as needed for

debugging

Keeping Your Symbols

Put them on a Symbol Server symstore – part of the Windows SDK

Reference stored symbols via file path SymbolSource.Server.Basic

http interface to symstore

Stores NuGet packages & symbols

bit.ly/SymbolSourceServerBasic NuPeek

Stores NuGet packages & symbols

https://bitbucket.org/thinkbeforecoding/nupeek

Keeping Your Symbols

TFS Build System Can store source, binaries and symbols Good blog post:

http://bit.ly/TFSSourceSymbols

My Goal

Move from CruiseControl.NET to TFS Builds

Use TFS Build Management For

Binaries

Symbols On

All QA Builds with retention for 2-3 months

All Release Builds with retention as long as they are in use.