Re: default -g ??!?

[Roger Leigh]

On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 10:36:34AM -0500, MK wrote:
> Ah, it's because of GNU make:
> 
> "By default, the Make rules should compile and link with -g, so that
> executable programs have debugging symbols. Users who don't mind being
> helpless can strip the executables later if they wish." 
> 
> Nice, flexible software it ain't.  
> 
> This is an assbackward policy. The idea that general, non-programmer
> users will be "helpless" without debugging symbols is completely
> absurd.  

What actual problems are the debugging symbols causing you?
What is the wrong with the default?

> If and when you do need debugging symbols, it should be easy to opt
> *for* them.  Instead, I am left with the choice of leaving them in by
> default, or having to use "strip", making it impossible to add them.

Automake already provides an "install-strip" target for just this
purpose.

Most users are unaware if they are running stripped or unstripped
binaries, but when a user runs into problems, it's nice to have
unstripped binaries around for diagnostic purposes.  It's also
contrary to the defaults, and what most people would expect, given
that pretty much every other automake-using package does the
opposite of what you want!

For Debian at least, we want unstripped binaries by default.  We'll
do the stripping later.  There is a reason for this.  We provide
"-dbg" packages, which nowadays contain detached debugging symbols.
The dh_strip program handles this as already mentioned.

In the future, we may end up taking a similar path to Ubuntu and
automatically produce .ddebs (debug .deb packages) containing the
stripped debug info for every single package built, or even allow
direct download of symbols from a central database.

Having unstripped binaries is contrary to all these goals.  Note that
this is not unique to Debian; all distributions want to have debug
symbols for end-user diagnostics, and we don't want to ask the user
to recompile with debug symbols enabled--they would then not be using
the same binaries, which might not exhibit the same behaviour.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
  .''`.  Roger Leigh
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