Debug Build Versus Release Build
When you create a new Visual C++ project, both a Win32 Debug and a Win32 Release version are automatically created with default options set for each.
| Version | Default Values |
| Win32 Debug | Full symbolic debugging information in Microsoft format
No optimization (optimization generally makes debugging more difficult) |
| Win32 Release | No symbolic debugging information
Optimized for maximum speed |
You can change the debug default options, for example, to output line numbers only, to generate a mapfile, or to redirect output.