Re: [RFC/RFA] Add support for the --readnever command-line option (DWARF only)

Yao Qi
2016-07-12T14:27:38Z

Hi Joel,

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 9:54 PM, Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> One of our customers asked us about this option, which they could
> see as being available in the version of GDB shipped by RedHat but
> not in the version that AdaCore supports.
>
> The purpose of this option is to turn the load of debugging information
> off. The implementation proposed here is mostly a copy of the patch
> distributed with RedHat Fedora, and looking at the patch itself and
> the history, I can see some reasons why it was never submitted:

Andrew Cagney posted the patch
https://www.sourceware.org/ml/gdb/2004-11/msg00216.html

> - The patch appears to have been introduced as a workaround, at
> least initially;
> - The patch is far from perfect, as it simply shunts the load of
> DWARF debugging information, without really worrying about the
> other debug format.
> - Who really does non-symbolic debugging anyways?

The reason, IMO, it was posted is that people want GDB avoid reading
debug info and efficiently dump stack backtrace. I think Red Hat people
must know why Fedora is shipping this patch.

I don't object to this approach.

--
Yao (齐尧)