Debug and release versions

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Debug and release versions

How to debug your Coin3D application

The Coin3D libraries have been built in both debug and release versions. The debug versions have a "d" appended to the filename. If you build a debug version of your application, it is recommended that you link with the debug version of Coin and SoWin. That way you can trace into the source code for the libraries if you need to look at the inner workings of these.

The PDB (program database) files that accompany the DLL files holds most of the debugging information. This information includes references to all the source code files used to build the library. One annoyance with these PDB files is that the references to the source files (the filenames) are absolute and were set when the libraries were built. It is very unlikely that the path matches the one where you have installed Coin3D. Whenever the Visual C++ debugger cannot find a source file, it pops up a dialog box and asks the developer to locate the file. All this can be avoided if you build debug versions of the libraries yourself - automatically regenerating the PDB files in the process. The libraries can be built easily using the supplied Visual C++ project files. For more information see our building instructions.