These specs are harder to find on the web than I thought

Someone recently wrote me, asking for the old CodeView format. I told him that it was readily available on the web. He subsequently wrote back and said he couldn't find them.

So, using both MSN Search and Google, I dug around and was able to find the spec, but in only one place. And I only found it because I knew lots of key words in the spec that the average person wouldn't.

So, for posterity's sake, here are two useful links:

For the Microsoft (CodeView) spec: https://www.x86.org/ftp/manuals/tools/sym.pdf

Another useful spec: The Intel OMF format: https://www.x86.org/ftp/manuals/tools/omf.pdf

Note that these documents are old, and very likely don't have the latest and greatest additions.

Also note that these days, we're pushing people towards the DIA SDK:

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 18, 2005
  Thank you for the good information.
• Anonymous
  May 02, 2005
  Thanks for the links. Here are a couple that I've found dealing with .pdb files:
  
  http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=22685
  http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=22429
  
  The DIA SDK is interesting but I didn't see anything to support writing .pdb files. Did I overlook something? If not, is an MS supported way to accomplish this?