Generating Symbols in release binaries with Visual Studio

Try with this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fsk896zz.aspx

Generating debug symbols (ie PDB files) is just creating an external file that a debugger can reference when looking at your code in memory. It doesn't affect the code that the compiler or linker generate (sort of like generating a .MAP file).

Now if you're talking about defining _DEBUG in a release build, that's a whole different question.

Update: I posted a comment on John Robbins blog about the. He wrote a response here:

http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2009/06/19/do-pdb-files-affect-performance.aspx

I found the following link on microsofts website: Generating and Deploying Debug Symbols with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0

This link pertains to Visual C++ 6, but I am assuming these instructions are the same for Visual C++ 8(2005) and 9(2008).

The information it gives is very similar to the link provided by TheBlack but more in-depth.