stabs vs dwarf (was: Re: Wrong address for static function in linux module )

[David Taylor <dtaylor@emc.com>]

> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 10:40:02 -0400
> From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
> 
> On Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 04:31:32PM +0200, Jean-Rene Peulve wrote:
> 
> > What do you recommend to use rather than stabs ?
> 
> DWARF-2.

DWARF might be better for some things, but compactness is not one of
them.

Until dwarf gets smaller or some other compelling reason arises, I
suspect that many people will stay with STABS.  DWARF is very
voluminous by comparison to STABS.

I recently did builds of our software 3 ways --

    . stabs
    . dwarf-2
    . dwarf-2 with dup elimination

Ignoring the debug information, the executable files were identical
(of course).  And the ``dwarf-2 with dup elimination'' ones were
typically 20-30 percent smaller than the dwarf-2 ones built without
specifying -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.  But, the sizes of the ``dwarf-2
with dup elimination'' executable files was 1.7 to 9.2 times the
sizes of the corresponding stabs executable files.

A full build tree (build products only, no sources) is 8.7 GB with
STABS, but 24.6 GB when built with -gdwarf-2 -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.

David
--
David Taylor
dtaylor@emc.com