Will any of the following configuration affect the performance of the release build

Question

I wanted to know if any of the following configurations will have any negative affect on the performance of my release build application. (The active type is release in VS2010).These configurations are recommended by a profiler for profiling purpose.

1-Adding http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols to the symbols file (.pdb) location. From options selecting debugging and then symbols

2- In C/C++ General selecting Program Database (/Zi) from the Debug information format

3- From Linker selecting Debugging then Generate Debug Information = Yes (/DEBUG)

Are there any options mentioned that do not affect the performance of the release build ? What should i return the values to after I am done profiling for optimal perfmormance ?

Answer 1

No, adding debug information to the build will not in anyway effect the optimisation settings or speed of the final build. All it will do is add a path and checksum to the executable/dll so it can find the and verify the associated pdb and generate said pdb. Its been a long time since adding debug information in VS actually affected the final exe/dll.

It can however affect build time, as its got to generate the relevant pdb, but its pretty easy to measure whether this'd affect your scenario.