What is difference between Debug DLL and Release DLL ?

ByAnkush Jain| Last Updated On Tuesday, May 16, 2017

.NET

Disclaimer: I am a consultant at Amazon Web Services, and this is my personal blog. The opinions expressed here are solely mine and do not reflect the views of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Any statements made should not be considered official endorsements or statements by AWS.

If you are a .NET Developer then you must know that there are mainly two build configurations.

• Debug
• Release

Debug is used in Development Environment while Release is used in Production Environment.

Now, what is difference between the dll files generated in both mode?

DLL files generated in Debug mode contains additional Debug Symbolic Information to provide debug information while debugging. Also, compiled code in debug dll is not optimized. Therefore size of dll file in Debug mode is comparaively larger then release mode.

On other hand, DLL files generated in Release mode are far optimized, also debugging symbol information is also omitted from the DLLs in this mode. Therefore, size of dll files generated in Release mode is comparaively smaller then files generated in Debug mode.

• Note: It is advised to publish your code in release mode.