#489 – Debug and Release Configurations Are Created Automatically

When you create a new project, two build configurations are created for you automatically–Debug and Release.  The Debug configuration is meant to be used for debugging your application and the Release configuration is meant to be the one that you build with when releasing your application.

The Debug configuration

• Defines the DEBUG constant (which you can use in your code to conditionally compile code only when debugging)
• Does not optimize the code (to make stepping through the code in the debugger easier)
• Builds output in \bin\Debug directory, rather than \bin\Release
• Outputs full debug info, so that the appropriate source code lines can be located when debugging