Re: debug packages?

["Kevin B. McCarty" <kmccarty@Princeton.EDU>]

Adeodato Simó wrote:
> * Paul Wise [Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:18:07 +0800]:

>> I'd like to add a package for debug information, since the app crashes
>> occasionally. Should I add a libfoo0-dbg or foo-dbg package containing
>> debug info for the lib and the app? or should I create separate
>> libfoo0-dbg and foo-dbg packages? I'm inclined to think that creating
>> just libfoo0-dbg with debug info for both the binary and is the right
>> way to go, since there is also a gui in another package, which uses the
>> library, therefore more people will just have the library than normal.

>   As long as it's only one -dbg package, I'd say that both names are ok.
>   Though now that, thanks to debhelper v5, it's easy to create -dbg
>   packages with symbols from multiple binary packages, I'd favour
>   ${source}-dbg for those. Remember to make it Prio: extra, Section:
>   libdevel.

I'm happy this topic came up because I have a couple questions about
this myself.  For multi-binary source packages, should the -dbg binary
package depend on all of the other binary packages, only recommend them,
or not have any dependencies?

Also (and this is quite a dumb question), when the end user wants to use
the debug package, what magical options does s/he give to gdb when
running a program so that gdb knows where to find the debugging
information?  Is additional setup needed when the thing to be debugged
is a shared library used by the program that the user directly executes?

Thanks in advance,

-- 
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu>   Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/    Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751                 Princeton, NJ 08544