On Sun, 2009-12-20 at 08:25 +1030, Ron wrote: > 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. Without debug information? > 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. What you seem to be saying is, gdb used to be small enough that you could squeeze it into a production image even though you didn't need it very often. And the new version of gdb breaks that. I think that's just tough luck. If another more important package grows that might also force you to throw out gdb. > 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. The gdb front-end is surely in the "things [you] don't need" category. > 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 ...)? That strongly suggests that gdbserver should be split into a separate package. Ben. > If I'm wrong, I'll have learned something cool though, which would be > win-win enough for me ;) -- Ben Hutchings Humans are not rational beings; they are rationalising beings.
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