How to Make sure iOS application stripped of debug symbols?

Question

Can any one help me to understand in simple terms that what is debug symbols? When to use them.

How do I make sure the my iOS application stripped of debug symbols. Some of other answer suggested that under Targets> Build settings> Deployment > SET NO to strip Debug Symbol During Copy.

But I have only Debug and Release entries and both are SET NO.

1) DO I have to add Distribute entry and SET it to NO? 2) Once I have SET this items to NO how do I make sure stripping debug symbol are now working?

Answer 1

You probably want to set Strip Debug Symbols During Copy to YES for Release/Distribution configurations. You can compare binary size, the one with debug symbols will be larger.

Debug symbols basically means that extra debugging information is included in the binary (e.g. method names are not stripped/removed etc.). Usually when building with Xcode, it creates a special file that contains these symbols which are later used for let's say symbolicating crash reports.