Visual Studio (C++) debugging in debug mode vs release mode
c++, debugging, visual-studio, visual-studio-debugging
Solution
No, it makes no difference. The linker's /DEBUG option is simply turned off by default for the Release build. The PDB it generates isn't all that useful for debugging, the optimizer that's turned on for the Release build makes a big ole mess of your debugging session. You'll have trouble setting breakpoints on some statements, see single-stepping acting weird (the code highlight moving around unpredictably) and the debugger not being able to show you variable values.
Still, sometimes you really need the PDB file, invaluable when you get a minidump back. Recorded by a customer when your program crashed and burned a thousand miles away. You need to plan for that, pretty important to generate the PDBs and store them so you'll have them available when you analyze the minidump.
Problem
I'm new to windows development, and my programming skills are not that strong (I'm with EE background, major is semiconductor), but at least I understand the fundamental of C/C++. Regarding Windows C++ project, I found that I can debug under both debug and release builds (by adding break points, and reading the value of variables) in visual studio. I did some research, and I found that as long as there is a PDB file, I can do the debugging. However, will the "debug-able" release build impact the performance? I also read about disabling debug in visual C++ projects. If I disable debugging, will the performance of a release build be better than a debug-enabled release build? Sorry for my broken English.