When I build my C# project as a release in Visual Studio, the resulting .exe contains the following string:
C:\Users\jornane\source\repos\«solution»\«project»\obj\Release\«name».pdb
The .exe file leaks my username and the path where I store the project. Is there a way I can prevent this from happening? I understand why that path would be there for Debug builds, but not for Release.
It is possible to replace the stored PDB paths using the -pathmap compiler option, for example the following generates «name».exe with the PDB path stored as .\«name».pdb, instead of using the full path.
C:\Users\«user»\source\repos\«solution»\«project»>csc -debug -pathmap:"%cd%=." «name».cs
The -pathmap option is not exposed in the IDE, but can be set into the .csproj file directly, by adding the following near the end of the file.
<Project>
<!-- ... -->
<Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<PropertyGroup>
<!-- after 'Microsoft.CSharp.targets' for 'IntermediateOutputPath' to be defined -->
<PathMap>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\$(IntermediateOutputPath)=.</PathMap>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
Replace <PathMap> with <PathMap Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='Release'"> for the option to apply to release build(s), only.
Note: the replacement path is set to "." in the examples above because csc does not allow it to be empty (error CS8101: The pathmap option was incorrectly formatted). Any other non-empty user-defined string will work in place of . as well.