The debugger only reads the symbolic debug information contained in .dnm and .dla symbol files. dblink is a utility that generates such symbol files. It extracts the symbol table from the host system object code and translates it into an independent representation that the debugger uses. The output files are the name of the executable file, with a .dnm extension and a .dla extension respectively. For example, a.out will generate a.dnm and a.dla.
If the existing .dnm file is older than the executable, or if the .dnm file was previously generated on a different host machine, the debugger will open a dialog box to ask you to choose whether to regenerate the symbolic debug information. If you choose Translate, dblink will be launched to generate the new symbolic debug information.
If you move or copy the executable to another location, be sure to also move or copy the associated .dnm and .dla files. Then, either preserve the original time stamps of the files, or make sure that the .dnm file has an earlier time stamp than the executable's.