Compiling Delphi 2006 Applications With Debug Information

Debug Info Agent™ exposes public, published, protected and private members of objects in Delphi applications as soon as the application is compiled with debug information. This topic explains how to include debug information into applications created with Borland Delphi 2006 for Win32. To learn how to prepare applications created with other Delphi versions, see Implementing Debug Info Agent™ Support in Applications.

External Debug Information (TDS Files)

1. Change the project settings to compile the application with TD32 debug information:

   1. Open your project in Borland Delphi 2006 for Win32.

   2. Select Project | Options from Delphi’s main menu. This will open the Project Options dialog.

   3. Select to the Compiler category and enable the Debug information and Local symbols options in the Debugging group:

      

      Note:

      It is possible to keep the Local symbols disabled, but in this case the names of some method parameters will not be displayed in the Object Browser panel.

   4. Switch to the Linker category and enable the Include TD32 debug info option in the EXE and DLL options group:

      

   5. Press OK to save the changes and close the Project Options dialog.

   6. Re-build the application.

2. Strip the debug information from each compiled executable or DLL. You can do this by using the TestComplete StripTDS utility or the Turbo Debugger 32-bit Symbol Table Stripper utility that is shipped along with Borland Developer Studio 2006 (the utility is installed with Borland C++Builder 2006 and has the following path: <Program Files>\Borland\BDS\4.0\Bin\tdstrp32.exe). Both utilities perform the same actions - remove debug information from the binary files and save it to separate .tds files. However, the tdstrp32 utility can only process one file at a time whereas the TestComplete StripTDS utility supports file masks and recursive processing.

   For example, to process all EXE and DLL files in the C:\MyApp folder and its subfolders using the StripTDS utility, you can use the following command:

   StripTDS.exe -r -w C:\MyApp\*.exe;C:\MyApp\*.dll

   To do this using the tdstrp32 utility, run the following command:

   for /r "C:\MyApp" %f in (*.exe *.dll) do tdstrp32.exe -s "%~ff"

   or this one if processing is done from a batch file:

   for /r "C:\MyApp" %%f in (*.exe *.dll) do (
     tdstrp32.exe -s "%%~ff"
   )

   Note:

   Both utilities only work with those sections in the binary files that contain debug information. They do not change the code and data sections, so your modules will still work as designed.

Internal Debug Information (TD32)

To compile your Delphi application with internal TD32 debug information, follow these steps:

1. Open your project in Borland Delphi 2006 for Win32.

2. Choose Project | Options from the main menu to open the Project Options dialog.

3. Select the Compiler category and do the following:

   • Disable the Optimization option in the Code Generation group.
   • Enable the Debug information, Local symbols and Use Debug DCUs options in the Debugging group.
   

   Note:

   It is possible to keep the Local symbols disabled, but in this case the names of some method parameters will not be displayed in the Object Browser panel.

4. Switch to the Linker category and check the Include TD32 debug info option in the EXE and DLL options group:

   

5. It is recommended that you turn off the Build with runtime packages option in the Packages category:

   

   If this property is checked, Delphi creates Borland package library (.bpl) files when compiling the application. TestComplete cannot access debug information in these files and some controls. If this property is unchecked, all information is included in a single executable and can be accessed by TestComplete. For more information about runtime packeges, see About Runtime Packages.

   If, for some reason, you cannot turn off the Build with runtime packages option, TestComplete may not be able to get access to the application's internal methods and properties. To resolve the problem, enable the Read debug information for statically linked libraries project option in TestComplete.

6. Once you have completed these steps, click OK to save the changes and close the Project Options dialog.

7. Re-build the application.

Remember to recompile the release version of your application without TD32 debug information in order to reduce the application size.

See Also

Debug Info Agent™
Debug Info Agent™ Specifics
Testing Delphi Applications - Overview