In part three of our discussion of PDBs and debugging, we explore an improvement to the debugging experience: SourceLink. Instead of using the symbol server tools to source index our PDBs, we can use an open source, standardized approach to map our symbols back to the files in source control that were used to build our binaries.

It’s not really an exploration of PDBs and debugging without talking about symbol servers. With .NET evolving, has our need for these previously essential systems changed? In this post, we’ll explore what a symbol server is, the role they fill, and their strengths and limitations.

Years ago, John Robbins examined the details of PDB files in PDB Files: What Every Developer Must Know. Since then, a lot has changed about .NET. Despite that, most developers still lack an understanding of how PDBs work or why they are so important. Most times, I see teams trying to prevent PDBs from being created in release code; this is a sure path to future problems. In this post, I’ll provide updated details on the nature of PDBs and how they work.

Most package management systems support some kind of “universal artifacts” storage. Azure Artifacts supports “universal packages”, Artifactory supports “generic repositories”, and Nexus has “raw repositories”. But what about GitHub? From all appearances, it would seem this is an oversight. Although not explicitly documented, it turns out it’s fully supported.

If you’ve ever wanted to integrate an external system or execute parts of the CI process asynchronously, the GitHub Checks API can provide a way to make that happen. In fact, you can even use Checks to allow two workflows to work together, no waiting or polling from the runner required. Today I’ll demonstrate how the API works and provide two workflows that demonstrate how to build a working GitHub Check.