Re: -dbg packages; are they actually useful?
On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 10:25:06PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > I'm looking at my local mirror (slowly) update at the moment, and I've
> > got to wondering: are the large -dbg packages actually really useful
> > to anybody? I can't imagine that more than a handful of users ever
> > install (to pick an example) the amarok-dbg packages, but we have
> > multiple copies of a 70MB-plus .deb taking up mirror space and
> > bandwidth. I can understand this for library packages, maybe, but for
> > applications?
> There are people working on ways of compressing the debuginfo
> information, and I've been told they might have results within a
> couple of months. Part of the problem is that depending on how the
> package is built, the -dbg packages can be huge, so it makes the
> cost/benefit ratio somewhat painful.
> If the -dbg files were more like these sizes:
> 224 e2fslibs-dbg_1.41.3-1_i386.deb 52 libss2-dbg_1.41.3-1_i386.deb
> 452 e2fsprogs-dbg_1.41.3-1_i386.deb 48 libuuid1-dbg_1.41.3-1_i386.deb
> 76 libblkid1-dbg_1.41.3-1_i386.deb 48 uuid-runtime-dbg_1.41.3-1_i386.deb
> 44 libcomerr2-dbg_1.41.3-1_i386.deb
> I doubt there's be too much concern....
Remaining concerns:
- each of these dbg packages requires manual modification to the source
package (incl. adding the package to debian/control)
- each has to go through the NEW queue
- each takes up space afterwards in the Packages file
Much better if these can be generated centrally as part of the builds.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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