Question

Is there any reason to not include pdb files in an installer? I have C++ logging functionality that walks the stack, and reports line numbers and file names. It would be great if my customers could send me logs with this information. However, they would need the pdb files. Is there any downside (other than installer package size) to deploying them?

Answer 1

Two possible downsides:

• The PDB file might make it easier for someone to reverse-engineer your application.
• As a result of the previous, someone might come to expect to be able to call undocumented functions in your DLLs.

If those don’t bother you, I can’t see any downside. Note though that you don’t really need this. As John Seigel says, you should be able to reconstruct the stack trace from a crash dump.