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, set Compile for debugging to Yes, and 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.