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ASP.NET 1.1 Visual Studio 2003

Debug vs Release Build

During implementation stage, what we normally do is we build (or compile) it as usual and then copy and paste the dll file from local to development server for testing.

And after the testing is succesfully, we moved the dll from development server to staging server for testing again and then to production server.

Everything seems fine but one thing I didn’t realize (or easily forget to do) is there is a release build. The difference between the two:

  • debug build consists of debugging information in Microsoft format and no optimization, which means the dll file size is larger.
  • release build does not consist debugging information in Microsoft format but got optimization, which means the dll file size is smaller. Thus, better performance.
  • I tried. Using debug build, my dll file size is 48 KB, while using release build it is just 44 KB. Not big difference, but imagine if you have many dlls, it counts a lot.

    In conclusion, we should use debug build during our local development while release build during implementation.