On Sun, Apr 22, 2007 at 07:29:55PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote: > Neil Williams wrote: > > > > Certain packages have already had bug reports requesting a -dbg > > > > package. > > > > > > I'd rather see some offline debug-symbol infrastructure for all > > > packages implemented, so that you can download the debug symbols when > > > you need them. > > > > But the -dbg package only depends on the same version of the library - > > the library won't depend on the -dbg so those who need the -dbg are the > > only ones who would download and install them. > > Each time this has come up before, the concern has been that adding -dbg > versions of every binary package would greatly inflate the size of the > archive, and nearly double the total number of packages, with associated > scalability problems. > > 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? > > Anyway, doubling the size of the archive is less of an issue than it > might have been in the past, since we've done the archive split, and > since ftp-master has 1.4 Terabytes of disk with half that unused, but > it is still a concern, for mirrors, number of DVDs, etc. What about some special parts on the archive for this, somethings like what is actually used for source packages, but of course arch dependant: deb-dbg http://http.us.debian.org/debian sid main could translate to http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dist/sid/main/dbg-$arch where all the -dbg packages could live. That would minimize the impact making -dbg packages easier not to mirror and avoid cluttering packages lists for non-developers users while only adding a 'add a deb-dbg mirror' instruction for requesting a backtrace on a bug report. > Scalability issues with the number of packages have also been reduced in > some areas. apt no longer has to download the while Packages files on > each update, so it wouldn't take 2x the bandwidth to add -dbg packages > for every package to the Packages files. There would still be > significant impact in apt's memory usage, in the disk space used to > store the Packages files, in the UIs that have to somehow present or > hide all these -dbg packages, etc. With the above approach this impact is minimized quite nicely. > 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. > > Someone made a very good point that it's often and increasingly painful to > rebuild debugging versions for the whole library chain of a binary. > OTOH, rebuilding a debug version of the binary itself is not especially > hard. > > So while I'd love to have a way to have -dbg packages available for > every binary, I actually am happy with this proposal to do it for only > every library (plus whatever other binaries really need it). And it's a > direction we're already moving in, with, as I mentioned, 227 lib*-dbg > packages already in the archive. That's more than 10% of all our > libraries already done[3]. > > So I suggest that we take this as an existing practice, document it as a > "should" in policy for now, document *how* to do separated debugging > symbols in the developers reference (which does not currently seem to > mention it at all), and go add -dbg versions of our library packages. > > -- > see shy jo, doing so for aalib now > > [1] Who are doing a really nice job on their -dbg packages. > [2] Actually, the ftp-masters did all the real setup work. > [3] Conversely, there are only 62 -dbg packages for non-libraries.. -- Damián Viano(Des) ¯ ¯ - _ _ - ¯ ¯ GPG: 0x6EB95A6F Debian ¯-_GNU_-¯ Linux Web: http://damianv.com.ar/ ¯-¯
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