Re: RFC: support debug info in separate files

Jim Blandy
2002-12-10T03:16:40Z

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:
> 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.

On rereading I think the docs should be a bit more detailed about
all that, yeah.

> > + 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.

I'm reluctant to put #if __MSDOS__ in there directly. Would it be
appropriate to #define something in xm-go32.h, which could be given a
default value of ".debug" in symfile.c?

> > 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.

Of course --- thanks for pointing out that omission.