Re: Bug#43787: changed title, and remade the proposed change

[Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de>]

On Wed, Sep 08, 1999 at 08:29:09PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
> >
> > This means, packages may choose other ways to specify "build with
> > debug symbols", and I can't be sure any longer what to do to get debug
> > symbols (in cases where they are supported).
> 
> I don't see a meaningful distinction between the cases where they're not
> supported and the cases where they're not built when the =debug option
> is set.  [If the package maintainer has decided that they're useless,
> I don't imagine that they would be supported.]

In cases it is supported, but not in the proper way, I can file a bug
report, but only if doing it the policy way is mandatory, not only because
it is a "suggestion".

[lot's of stuff about tweaking build environment with wrappers deleted]
 
> Now you're talking about a case where it's important to build executables
> with debugging symbols -- and this is a case where it's not the package
> maintainer that wants the executables built that way.  Personally,
> I've always envisioned doing this by tweaking the build environment.
> It sounds like you have a case in mind where this isn't reasonable.

Raul, how hard do you want to make it for users to build with debugging
info? Activating a gcc wrapper, changing install and strip. This is
completely unreasonable.

Free Software works because people can contribute in finding and resolving
bug reports. It is important that people can easily provide backtraces from
gdb and similar. The harder we make it for our users to contribute, the less
contribution we will get.

Indeed, I would prefer we had a way to provide a Debian system with full
debugging symbols included. I hope this is possible some day. But this is
not achievable currently, I know. Still, I think we should at least try.

I hpoe my point is now more clear.

Thanks,
Marcus


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