Hmmm; interesting and illogical
Somewhat, yeah, for historical reasons.
Debug 2 on non- controllers, all K-line and older CAN stuff, will output PLA/PLB files only a label file doesn't exist already. It was invented back when Ross-Tech needed people to submit this data, in order to make label files. This existed before it was so common to have hundreds of tweakable adaptation channels, before there was so much interest in archival and comparison.
If you need to, you can tell to dump the contents of an individual controller through the "Controller
Channel Map" menu under "Applications" even if there's already a label file, but there's no direct way to force them all. Some people have been known to move the contents of the Labels directory elsewhere, temporarily, to kind of trick into it, but you need to be careful or be willing to reinstall.
Debug 2 on -based controllers will unconditionally dump out all measuring and adaptation values. It's mainly a testing or archival , to snapshot the state of things before you make changes or to document the state after. For controllers, label files have much less relevance, just manually documented coding information (if applicable, the new "experimental" stuff isn't in there) and some other internal hints and pointers.
It's very possible to have a mix of those behaviors in the same car, to have some and some non- controllers.
Shouldn't a Debug value [2 in this case] work consistently in all environments?
If I had a magic wand, I would make this functionality consistent AND accessible through some friendly menu instead of an arcane debug setting. This already exists, in part, in the "Controller
Channel Map" menu. I'd go a little further, and place all the output in a VIN-specific directory under C:\Ross-Tech\\Logs, potentially with date-time sub-directories under that to maintain history. But I don't have a magic wand, and I have no idea what's on Ross-Tech's development backlog, so I make do. It's not much of a hardship once you know how it works.