Question

The debug info is useful when using tools like AQTime to profile application.

Since Delphi XE, there is a new linking option: “Specifying Path to Debug Info Files” that will generate a separate .TDS file.

What are advantages of using separate debug info files?

Answer 1

The .TDS files are Turbo Debugger 32 Debug Info files.

As you stated, separated debug info files are to be used in separated development tools, e.g. a Software Profiler.

There are several formats around. Some tools expect the information to be available as .TDS, the native Delphi format (not standard is .map), other is .DBG (Microsoft’s format)… You can convert from one format to the other via some tools (e.g. map2dbg).

Another option is to embed the debugging information inside the .exe. In this case, the .exe size will grow (and may grow a lot). There are several formats arounds, but most rely on the PE chunked format.

So as advantage of using separated debug info file, I mainly see:

• Does not increase the .exe size;
• Can be deleted if not used;
• Can be added on request (e.g. for support);
• Can be compressed when not used;
• Can be converted to one format to another.

For our Open Source logging tool, we provided a mixed approach: either use the standard .map file, either an external compressed .mab version (900 KB .map into 70 KB .mab), either embed the .mab to the final .exe.