Are debugging symbols any good when compiling with LLVM?

I'm trying to hook up a real-time crash reporting service like airbrake, bugse开发者_开发问答nse or TestFlight's SDK but I'm wondering if the crash reports that are generated from crashes are any good when compiling your MonoTouch project using the LLVM compiler.

When you're configuring an iPhone build if you go to the proj settings > iPhone Build > Advanced tab it says "Experimental, not compatible with debug mode". This is why I'm questioning the stacktrace from the crash reports.

There are several points to consider here:

a) enabling debug on your builds:

• tells the compilers to emit debugging symbols (e.g. the .mdb files) which includes a lot of information (variables names, scopes, lines numbers...);
• add extra debugging code to your application (e.g. to connect the application, on the device, to the debugger, on your Mac);
• tells the compiler (e.g. AOT) to disable some optimizations (that would make debugging harder);

This result in larger, slower applications that contains a lot of data you don't want people to access (e.g. if you fear reverse engineering). For releases it's a no win situation for everyone.

b) using the LLVM compiler won't work with debug mode. It's generally not an issue since, when debugging, you'll likely want the build process to be as fast as possible (and LLVM is slower to build). A problematic case is if your bug shows up only on LLVM builds.

c) The availability of managed stack traces do not requires debug symbols. They are built from the metadata available in your .dll and .exe files. But, when debugging symbols are available, the stack trace will include the line numbers and filenames for each stack frame.

d) I never used the tools you mentioned, but I do believe them to be useful :-) You might wish to ask specific questions about them (wrt MonoTouch). Otherwise I think it's worth testing to see if the level of details differ (and if the extra details are of any help to you). IMO I doubt it will bring you more than the actual 'cost' of shipping 'debug' builds.

• first create a "crash me" feature in your application;
• then compare reported results from non-LLVM "release" and "debug" builds;
• next compare the non-LLVM "release" and LLVM "release" builds;

It be nice to post your experience of the above: here, monotouch mailing-list and/or a blog entry :-)