On Sun, 18 Apr 1999, Ken Schweigert wrote:
> I'm preparing to install the new version of WindowMaker and a question
> about one of the make switches.
>
> What is meant by "if you want to strip the debugging symbols from the
> binaries ...make install-strip"???
>
> What are debugging symbols and when or why would you want them??
>
When a programmer is developing a new program, he will spend a great deal of
time debugging it for hard to find errors. One great way to debug is to use a
debugging program that will step through the code line by line. At any time the
programmer can examine the state of variables. In order to do this, however,
the code must be compiled with debugging symbols added in. This will greatly
increase the size of the resulting program. When the program is finally
complete, it is normally recompiled without the debugging symbols.
WindowMaker is still in development (even though it is extremely stable). The
makefile that comes with the source assumes that you want debugging symbols
included. Stripping removes all of the debugging symbols so that the program is
now smaller and faster.
If you're not a developer, go ahead and strip away.
--
Arandir...
