Re: Bug#560786: gdb: Please make the python dependency optional
On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 08:12:44PM +0000, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> Why would you install gdb on a (non-development) system, rather than a
> gdb stub?
Maybe I'm missing something cool and obvious here, but in the particular
case this came to my attention: simplicity?
The device is amply endowed enough to comfortably run gdb on it directly,
and all I really needed gdb for was to get a backtrace from a single
failure. I don't really expect to need it again anymore for a while.
I've always considered the stubs to be for devices that _aren't_ powerful
enough to run gdb (or a minimal, but otherwise "out of the box" Debian
install for that matter). This one isn't _that_ small.
What it doesn't have is mountains of desktop grade filesystem storage, so
filling that with interpreters for languages that will never be used on
it, doesn't really seem like the best use of customers hard earned dollars.
And this doesn't really seem like an unusual device configuration for the
next 5 - 10 years or so. We really would rather just run Debian on it than
hack up yet another pseudo-distro because it wouldn't fit for silly reasons,
so I'd like to "not have to pay for things we don't need", to steal an idea
from the C++ folk.
Am I really missing something about the stubs that would make that easier,
or faster, or better, than apt-get install gdb, followed by "bt"? Because
then yeah, maybe my point here is moot. But my impression is it would be
a lot more work than that, and I don't see an arm stub at all, (and
gdbserver is in the gdb package ...)?
If I'm wrong, I'll have learned something cool though, which would be
win-win enough for me ;)
Cheers,
Ron
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