Name

pdbdump - dump content of PDB files (program databases)

Synopsis

pdbdump.exe [OPTION]... [FILTER]... [pdb-file]...

Description

pdbdump is a tool for dumping the content of PDB files to stdout.

PDB files (program databases) are produced by Microsoft Visual Studio during the build of a project, for example C++ projects. They hold debugging information, such as the user-defined types, enumerations, functions etc.

pdbdump outputs these information in JSON, XML or SQLite3. This allows for further processing, such as static code analysis. For example, one may track the growth of the size of some critical structs over time, check packing of structs, generate some documentation etc.

Hint: the pdbdump tool only works on PDB files that have been generated using the linker option /DEBUG:FULL.

Options

--help        show this help
--version     show version number
--license     show license
--list        list all supported properties
--json        output JSON, default
--xml         output XML
--sqlite3     output SQLite3, including table generation
--csv         output CSV

Filter

PDB files contain a lot of information, much of which might not be of interest to you. To keep processes fast and output small, you can filter the output according to your needs.

A filter option is a regular expression starting with either + (for adding content) or - (for ignoring content). Next follows the tag symbol:: and then some regex.

For example, to select the length property, use the filter

+symbol::length

Select all properties starting with virtual

+symbol::virtual.*

Discard all properties containing an e (for whatever reason)

-symbol::.*e.*

Dump all properties for each symbol

+symbol::.*

By default, only name, symIndexId and symTag are dumped.

Examples

Dump some minimal information for each symbol in JSON format.

pdbdump.exe test.pdb

Do the same for multiple files

pdbdump.exe test1.pdb test2.pdb test3.pdb

Dump to a file

pdbdump.exe test.pdb > test.json

Dump a lot of information to a file

pdbdump.exe +symbol::.* test.pdb > test.json

Output in XML format

pdbdump.exe --xml test.pdb

Output in SQLite3 format

pdbdump.exe --sqlite3 test.pdb

The SQLite3 option also produces table generation code. Hence, to create and fill a SQLite3 database test.db, one simply may

pdbdump.exe --sqlite3 test.pdb | sqlite3.exe test.db

See also

For the meaning of the symbols properties etc., consult the documentation of the DIA SDK (Debug Interface Access SDK).

Author

Written by Georg Ulbrich. Contributions by Graham Sutherland.

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2021 by Georg Ulbrich. License MIT.

Homepage

The pdbdump project is hosted at https://github.com/gu1729/pdbdump.