Re: [PATCH 2/4] python support for fetching separate debug files: have_debug_info

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 09:33:59 -0800
> From: Doug Evans <dje@google.com>
> Cc: gdb-patches <gdb-patches@sourceware.org>, Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com>, 
> 	Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj@redhat.com>
> 
> > If this attribute cannot be relied upon, why is it a good idea to
> > expose it to Python?
> 
> It's a good question.
> I thought about the name for this attribute for a non-insignificant
> amount of time.

The name is not my problem.

> The problem that needs to be solved is for Python code to be able to tell
> whether to spend time fetching separate debug files, as the latter can take
> a significant amount of time.  Also, a program may use a large number of
> shared libraries and the user may wish (or not wish) debug info to be
> fetched for each one.  So we want, IMO, a simple and cheap initial
> test for whether we need to fetch debug files.

Why not make that test part of the method that fetches the debug info?

> For the use-case in question,  another way to look at the attribute is
> "Has debug info been stripped or not?".

But there's no reliable way to determine that, either, is there?