bug#37527: [PATCH] Install C source code for for debugging help

[Michael Albinus]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

Hi Eli,

>> +* GNU/Linux source packages
>> +
>> +Many GNU/Linux systems provide separate packages containing the
>> +sources of Emacs.  They are useful if you want to check the source
>> +code of Emacs primitive functions, and alike.
>
> I'd add here "or debug Emacs on the C level".

This would require also the debug package, see below.

>> +The names of the packages that you need varies according to the
>> +GNU/Linux distribution that you use.  On Debian-based systems, you can
>> +install all the packages needed to build the installed version of
>> +Emacs with a command like 'apt-get source' (on older systems, replace
>> +'emacs' with eg 'emacs25').  On Red Hat-based systems, the
>> +corresponding command is <tbd>.
>
> Does this include the emacs-debugsource stuff mentioned by Andreas?
> If not, I think we should add that.

Not so simple. Debug symbols are packaged in a *-dbg
package. Unfortunately, this doesn't exist for every released Emacs
version.

On Ubuntu 19.04, which I am using, I cannot see any Emacs debug
package. On Ubuntu 18.04, the recent LTS version, there is emacs25-dbg
25.2+1-6 "Debugging symbols for emacs25".

With Debian, the situation is even worse. Debian 10 (buster) does not
offer any Emacs debug package yet. Debian 9 (stretch) offers emacs24-dbg
24.5+1-11+deb9u1 "Debugging symbols for emacs24".

Shall we add debug packages to our description, even with this limited
availability?

> Otherwise, this is fine with me, it can be installed on master right
> now.

I'll wait until Monday, then I'll have a Fedora machine @work. Good for
adding the Red Hat case.

> Thanks.

Best regards, Michael.