in precompiled asp.net website - Does it matter?

Question

I\'m deploying a precompiled and all-page-merged website using Web Deployment Projects on Visual Studio 2008. Note that all assemblies and projects have been compiled in Release

Answer 1

According to the documentation:

Specifies whether to compile debug binaries rather than retail binaries

However, having just quickly reflected through System.Web, I can see the debug flag is used (directly or indirectly) by the following:

• Runtime compilation (ASPX/ASCX/MASTER)
• Code generation of the browser capabilities files
• HttpDebugHandler, which is used during a debugging session

As a result, if your site is precompiled you will not receive a performance hit. However, as the HttpApplication will respond to the DEBUG http verb, you open yourself up to security problems.

In short, set debug=false, even if your site is precompiled.

Edit: debug=true will result in a performance (see Mehmet Aras's answer) hit for caching and no execution timeout, but it will not reduce execution speed for compiled pages.