Symbol server for obfuscated applications

[CSXPJC]

I am in the process of setting up a symbol and source server for my project. Setting these up is pretty straight forward, but I'm unclear whether obfuscation will impact the use of this facility.

My build performs the following actions:
1. Build application
2. Index PDBs with source using Windows Debugging Tools scripts
3. Archive PDBs to the symbol server using symstore commands

At what point do you suggest I perform obfuscation (with PDB generation turned on)? Does the obfuscation have any effect on how the symbol server and source indexing works?[/list]

[Brian Donahue]

Hi Paul,

A SmartAssembly build gives you the option to "generate debugging information" so you can get a PDB that corresponds to your protected build. You should be able to put this build in a symbol server using symstore.exe, but of course, this corresponds to the protected assembly, so you would still need to decode any stack traces you get from customers by using SmartAssembly.

The PDB produced by SmartAssembly preserves the original document names unless you set the "obfuscate document URLs" option, so I suppose the PDB would still be a great help if you want to set breakpoints in a live debugging session.
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Brian Donahue
Technical Support
Red Gate Software Ltd.
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