Debugging symbols by default

On Fri, 2002-04-05 at 16:55, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

We had discussed a while ago that it might be a good idea to compile with
debugging symbols by default, at least when using GCC. Personally, I
think that that would be a good idea, for users and developers alike.

If we go with that, I'd like to implement a new target 'install-strip'
that strips the binaries while they are installed, as a compensation if
you will. (It strips the libraries in intelligent ways, too.)

This could be a win-win situation. Developers don't need to type
--enable-debug all the time, users don't need to recompile when we ask
them to trace a bug, and if you're pressed for disk space then
'install-strip' will save you even more space than simply omitting
debugging symbols. (Or you can keep the unstripped binaries around
elsewhere for debugging -- the possibilities are endless ;-) )

Comments?

With the Caldera (nee SCO) compiler -O and -g are mutually exclusive.
If you include both, you'll get -g.

I'd recommend against this for production use with the Caldera cc and CC
compilers.

LER
--
Larry Rosenman http://www.lerctr.org/~ler
Phone: +1 972-414-9812 E-Mail: ler@lerctr.org
US Mail: 1905 Steamboat Springs Drive, Garland, TX 75044-6749

Larry Rosenman writes:

On Fri, 2002-04-05 at 16:55, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

We had discussed a while ago that it might be a good idea to compile with
debugging symbols by default, at least when using GCC. Personally, I

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

With the Caldera (nee SCO) compiler -O and -g are mutually exclusive.
If you include both, you'll get -g.

I'd recommend against this for production use with the Caldera cc and CC
compilers.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

We had discussed a while ago that it might be a good idea to compile with
debugging symbols by default, at least when using GCC.

A tricky questions is what to do with the --enable-debug option. For GCC
it would become --disable-debug (i.e., remove -g from CFLAGS), but I'm not
sure we'd need that if we provide 'make install-strip'.

For other compilers, it's anyone's guess. We could continue to provide
--enable-debug to add -g to CFLAGS. Some commerical vendors' compilers
actually support various combinations of debugging and optimizing these
days, but with different flags. So if you really try to build with
debugging support on those platforms you'd probably want to supply the
CFLAGS yourself.

I suppose one of the less confusing choices would be to not have that
option. Setting CFLAGS yourself is even less typing on average.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

I am not sure about the idea of -g by default. I know lyx uses -g by
default, and the compile/install takes forever. In fact, I have removed
-g from my compiles here because it takes too long to compile/link and I
do it too often. When I need to debug, I recompile with -g. My concern
is that we may start to look very bloated with -g and those huge
binaries. My question is whether it is worth the install slowness/bloat?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

We had discussed a while ago that it might be a good idea to compile with
debugging symbols by default, at least when using GCC.

A tricky questions is what to do with the --enable-debug option. For GCC
it would become --disable-debug (i.e., remove -g from CFLAGS), but I'm not
sure we'd need that if we provide 'make install-strip'.

For other compilers, it's anyone's guess. We could continue to provide
--enable-debug to add -g to CFLAGS. Some commerical vendors' compilers
actually support various combinations of debugging and optimizing these
days, but with different flags. So if you really try to build with
debugging support on those platforms you'd probably want to supply the
CFLAGS yourself.

I suppose one of the less confusing choices would be to not have that
option. Setting CFLAGS yourself is even less typing on average.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

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Bruce Momjian writes:

I am not sure about the idea of -g by default. I know lyx uses -g by
default, and the compile/install takes forever. In fact, I have removed
-g from my compiles here because it takes too long to compile/link and I
do it too often. When I need to debug, I recompile with -g. My concern
is that we may start to look very bloated with -g and those huge
binaries. My question is whether it is worth the install slowness/bloat?

PostgreSQL compile time is minimal compared to other packages. If you're
worried about 30 seconds, turn off the optimization or use parallel make.
If you see yourself doing a full build too often, turn on dependency
tracking. The extra time you spend building with -g is the time you save
yourself and the users from having to recompile everything because a bug
needs to be tracked down. And when you rebuild, the bug might not be
reproduceable.

I don't buy the disk space argument either. If you're worried about a few
megabytes then you going to have a lot of trouble running a database.
And if you're still worried, you can run install-strip, which is the
standard way to do it.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net