On Wed, Sep 08, 1999 at 05:30:09PM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > > You can always build with DEB_DEBUG_OPTIONS=debug and expect that the > > executables created will have debug symbols. This is already true even > > without this policy being implemented. > > This is true now, but with the proposal of Ben implemented, we have the > following sentence:
Actually, it isn't true now. It's trivially not true for packages which don't build elf executables. [I'm not sure if there are any oddball build environments which produce elf executables but which don't provide debugging symbols.] > > If you want users to be able to rebuild your package with > > debugging information easily, the suggested way is to use the > > ``DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS'' environment variable. > > 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.] By the way, are you aware of any cases where using a gcc cover that forces -g would prevent executables from building properly? [Obviously it's possible to have a build environment where strip is a link to /bin/true and install -s is no different from install.] In the past, the idea was that the package maintainer would find it useful to have executables with debugging symbols. The autobuild machines obviously don't gain any advantage from debugging symbols so it's meaningful to turn them off -- at least for cases such as the X packages where it's not reasonable to expect the entire build process to run in cache memory. 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. Can you describe this case? -- Raul
