Remote debugging - Release build optimisations

I recently had to diagnose an issue which required remote debugging the application as no exception was raised and therefore no dump could be obtained and analysed. The issue was caused by an error code deep down in the call stack being returned and ignored a few levels up the call stack :(

Whilst this was trivial to debug using the windbg client and dbgsvr on the server ( both part of the debugging tools package ) I found in some cases, particularly where the error code was being returned, that local variables couldn't be seen. The message <Memory access error> was displayed in the locals window for each variable.

Our standard process is to generate debugging symbols with each release build by simply selecting the generate debugging symbols option (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnvc60/html/gendepdebug.asp). To accurately see variables in both the watch and locals windows you need to make sure you disable optimisations i.e. through Project Settings / C++ / Optimisations - Set this to Disable ( Debug ).

Obviously this should only be disabled for ad hoc builds as you will most likely want to enable all optimisations in your standard builds you deploy. It's hard enough trying to get our applications to be as performant as possible without disabling optimisiations which the compiler gives us automatically :)