Re: stabs support in binutils, gcc, and gdb

[Doug Evans <dje@google.com>]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 9:52 AM, nick clifton <nickc@redhat.com> wrote:
>> Switching to DWARF causes our build products directory (which contains
>> *NONE* of the intermediate files) to swell from 1.2 GB to 11.5 GB.
>> Ouch!  The DWARF ELF files are 8-12 times the size of the STABS ELF
>> files.
>>
>> If the DWARF files were, say, a factor of 2 the size of the STABS files,
>> I could probably sell people on switching to DWARF; but, a factor of 8
>> to 12 is too much.
>
>
> Have you tried using a DWARF compression tool like dwz ?
>
>   http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2012-04/msg00686.html
>
> Or maybe the --compress-debug-sections option to objcopy ?

Yeah, that would be really useful data to have.

Plus, there's also -gdwarf-4 -fdebug-types-section.

So while plain dwarf may be 8-12x of stabs, progress has been made,
and we shouldn't base decisions on incomplete analyses.

If we had data to refute (or substantiate) claims that dwarf was
*still* X% larger than stabs and people were still avoiding dwarf
because of it, that would be really useful.