Difference between trace and debug

Question

What is the difference between Trace and Debug the application in .Net ?

Nattudurai Eswaramurthy · Answer

The system.Diagnostics namespace contains the Debug and Trace classes that include shared methods. The diffetrnce between these two classes is in the way Trace and Debug statements are treated at the of creating a release bulid. Trace statements are included by default when the program is compiled in to release buildwhere as debug statements are not.The Debug class is used for debugginghowever the Trace class is used for testing and optimization even after an application is compiled and released. Debug and trace enables you to monitor the application for errors and exception with out VS.NET IDE. In Debug mode compiler inserts some debugging code inside the executable. As the debugging code is the part of the executable they run on the same thread where the code runs and they do not given you the exact efficiency of the code ( as they run on the same thread). So for every full executable DLL you will see a debug file also as shown in figure 'Debug Mode'. Trace works in both debug as well as release mode. The main advantage of using trace over debug is to do performance analysis which can not be done by debug. Trace runs on a different thread thus it does not impact the main code thread.

Jignesh Trivedi · Answer

hi Debug and trace enables you to monitor the application for errors and exception without VS.NET IDE. In Debug mode compiler inserts some debugging code inside the executable. As the debugging code is the part of the executable they run on the same thread where the code runs and they do not given you the exact efficiency of the code. Trace works in both debug as well as release mode. The main advantage of using trace over debug is to do performance analysis which cannot be done by debug. Trace runs on a different thread thus it does not impact the main code thread. Tracing is a process about getting information regarding program's execution. On the other hand debugging is about finding errors in the code. hope this will help you.