To create a debug information (.idy) file for layout file input

  1. In Visual Studio, open a Visual COBOL project that contains the COBOL program(s) on which you want to base a record layout file.
  2. On the project's COBOL properties page, check Compile for debugging; then save the project.
  3. Build the project to generate an .idy file for each program in the project, or build a specific program to generate its .idy file.
Note: Visual COBOL writes .idy files to the output directory specified in your project properties.