3 ms·
> Microsoft provides them as a separate download That's not _wrong_, but I think it's misleading. Microsoft provides in such a way that they will automatically
by brucedawson 6y ago
> Microsoft provides them as a separate download
That's not _wrong_, but I think it's misleading. Microsoft provides in such a way that they will automatically download on demand. That is fundamentally different from a manual download. Among other things it means that I can (and frequently do) debug crashes from other people's computers running different versions of Windows and I never have to think about it. It just works.
- saagarjha 6y agoOh, yes, totally; I just lumped it with Linux because the situation on macOS is so much worse that it's almost not comparable. I don't use Windows much, but from what I hear it seems like a dream to work with; Linux is ok once you figure out how to set up debug info (and I am hoping it can be like Windows in the future) but the situation on macOS is just hopeless because nobody is willing to share symbols. It's made even more sad because much of the infrastructure is already there; it's just locked up in private API and internal glue and with none of that crucial debug information to feed it.
- p_l 6y agoThere also used to be a special debug build of windows (and other MS software), which included debug symbols directly but also had various asserts etc. left in, specifically to enable debugging of issues that reached into OS components (for example when developing anything that integrated deeply into OS, whether in kernel or userspace). Not sure if it's still provided but it was part of MSDN offering.