Re: RFC: support debug info in separate files

Eli Zaretskii
2002-11-26T06:34:14Z

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!