Re: Mandatory -dbg packages for libraries?
On Sun, Apr 22, 2007 at 07:29:55PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Even with separated debugging symbols, -dbg packages are frequently
> larger than the package they provide debugging symbols for. See for
> example xserver-xorg-core-dbg. Looking through the 227 lib*-dbg
> packages, I found few contain separated debugging symbols, except for
> packages maintained by the xorg team[1]. I'm not sure if this is due
> many people still not knowing about separated debugging symbols, or due
> to technical reasons. For example, is there a tecnical reason why
> libc6-dbg does not contain separated debugging symbols?
Yes, it's deliberate. People rarely need them just because they're
debugging something linked to libc.so.6. Having them slows down GDB
startup and increases its memory usage, for _every_ debug session.
You'll notice if you look closely that libc6-dbg contains two things.
One of them is a set of libraries you can use if you want to debug
libc6. The other is a set of separate symbol files, but they contain
only frame unwind information, no symbolic or line number information.
This keeps the size and performance impact of the package down, but
makes backtraces out of libc6 hugely more reliable.
> I've considered before trying to set up a separate, parallel archive
> that would only hold the -dbg packages, but implementing that without
> initially using the Debian infrastructure would be tough, and my
> experiences with setting up[2]/maintaining the separate udeb section of
> the archive is that it adds a lot of complexity.
FWIW, I still think this is the way to go, though it would be hard.
They wouldn't need nearly as much mirroring. e.g. they could go into
a separate pool directory...
--
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery
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