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What is the difference between debug mode and release mode?

Can anybody help me with the difference between release mode and debug mode!!
I have no idea of what they are and their significance.

sigme

Debug and Release are different configurations for building your project. As the name implies, you generally use the Debug mode for debugging your project, and the Release mode for the final build for end users. The Debug mode does not optimize the binary it produces (as optimizations can greatly complicate debugging), and generates additional data to aid debugging. The Release mode enables optimizations and generates less (or no) extra debug data.

Hope this helps,
-Tom Meschter
Software Dev, Visual C# IDE

Don't forget to mark the best replies as answers!

Tom Meschter

Also, changing from Debug to Release mode can screw up directory access, I've noticed. I had an application that always accessed a particular subdirectory. Always worked great until I changed to release mode and did the build. Maybe someone can explain why?

Bryan

BryanMiller

Because the release and debug versions run from different folders, then any code that uses relative paths may behave differently, because the relative paths may be different.

Matthew Watson

So, it's simply a matter of changing the relative path before Release? For example, I have an application that opens files using an openFileDialog control. I have two string variables, declared right after the "required designer variables", that I initialize in the form's constructor.

int myindex = Application.ExecutablePath.IndexOf("Debug");

app_directory = Application.ExecutablePath.Substring(0,myindex+6);

contacts_directory = app_directory + "Contacts\\";

Now, I then use string variable contacts_directory in the btnOpen_Click( ) event to specify the Contacts subdirectory of the application directory:

fileDialog.InitialDirectory = contacts_directory;

So, it's simply a matter of:

fileDialog.InitialDirectory = contacts_directory;

Now, never mind the fact that .InitialDirectory doesn't work right except for the first time btnOpen_Click( ) is used after the application starts. That's a separate issue that I know many, many people have complained about.

It sounds like what I need to do before building the Release is change "myindex" above to:

int myindex = Application.ExecutablePath.IndexOf("Release");

substituting "Release" for "Debug". It seems like if folders Debug and Release are on the same level, and each contains a Contacts subdirectory, that this substitution would suffice. But it does not. I get the following runtime error in debug mode:

What is this "C:\DoContacts" directory?

Bryan

BryanMiller

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