DUMPBIN /PDBPATH

This option directs DUMPBIN to describe its search for PDB and DBG files.

Syntax

/pdbpath[:verbose]

The /pdbpath option accepts any number of arguments, including none. The one permitted value for all arguments is the simple keyword verbose. Anything else is a fatal error (LNK1117).

Behaviour

This option applies to executables in PE format and to debug files.

The /pdbpath option directs DUMPBIN to seek PDB and/or DBG files even if it has no other reason to. Such other reason is common in practice since several other DUMPBIN options ask for information that may have been removed from the input file to a PDB or DBG file, or for information that can be enhanced by reference to a PDB or DBG file. These options are:

including when implied by /all or /unwindinfo.

What is special to /pdbpath is that it also directs DUMPBIN to describe the search. Thus, if /pdbpath is given, discovery of each suitable PDB or DBG file is announced at standard output. If the verbose keyword is given, then failures are reported also.

Note that it is not DUMPBIN that does the searching. Though DUMPBIN knows the format of a DBG file, it knows nothing of PDB details, and nothing of the process a debugger might use to search for a suitable PDB or DBG file. For this, DUMPBIN uses an interface exported from MSPDB70.DLL and merely responds to callbacks from that interface. The search will be the same as done by a contemporaneous debugger because MSPDB70.DLL (used by the compiler and linker) and DBGHELP.DLL (used by debuggers) are built with shared code—but that and the interface are another story.