my dll size increased when generating the pdb on release mode

Hichem 1

Hi,

My dll size increased by ~25% when activating pdb generation on release mode. I only turned up that option on visual studio. Is that expected? What to do debug or understand where it's coming from?

Thank!

RLWA32 43,306 Reputation points

2022-11-02T16:15:53.05+00:00

How are we supposed to reproduce the problem? Compiler options? Linker options? And so forth.
Minxin Yu 11,026 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2022-11-03T05:36:24.887+00:00

activating pdb generation

Do you mean Generate Debug info option? I can't reproduce your problem after enabling the option.
Hichem 1 Reputation point

2022-11-03T09:53:01.113+00:00

Hello,

yes that option Generate Debug info.
I found the root cause on my side. When activating pdb generation, /DEBUG is used by the linker. This will results on the deactivation of the optimization flags /OPT:REF and /OPT:ICF which are by default enabled in the release mode as explained here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/opt-optimizations?view=msvc-170 .
On my case when putting these flags on again, I'm getting the same dll size.

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my dll size increased when generating the pdb on release mode