Re: RFC: support debug info in separate files

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>]

On 25 Nov 2002, Jim Blandy wrote:

> This patch, written by Alexander Larsson, allows GDB to use debug info
> that has been extracted into a separate executable file, using the
> "strip -f" command as provided in Ulrich Drepper's elfutils.

Does that mean this feature is not supported by GNU `strip'?  If so, this 
should be reflected in the docs.

> +  debugfile = alloca (strlen (debug_file_directory) + 1
> +                      + strlen (dir)
> +                      + strlen (".debug/")
> +                      + strlen (basename) 
> +                      + 1);

`.debug' is an invalid file name on DOS 8+3 filesystems (leading dots are 
not allowed).  For the benefit of users of the DJGPP port of GDB, I 
suggest to allow an additional name, `_debug', as a substitute.  Thus, 
conditioned on __MSDOS__, GDB would look for `_debug' subdirectory if 
`.debug' does not exist.

> diff -u -r1.131 gdb.texinfo
> --- gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo	11 Oct 2002 16:13:15 -0000	1.131
> +++ gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo	26 Nov 2002 03:42:46 -0000

The doco patch is approved, but please add at least one index entry that 
leads to this information.  Something like

  @cindex separate debug info file

sounds appropriate.

> +@table @code
> +@kindex set debug-file-directory
> +@item set debug-file-directory @var{directory}
> +Set the global directory where @value{GDBN} searches for separate
> +debug files to @var{directory}.
> +@end table

A "@cindex global debug file directory" here would be good.

Thanks!