[NTLUG:Discuss] debuginfo in rpm repositories

[Peter A. Koren]

On Tue, 2005-08-09 at 10:33 -0500, Justin M. Forbes wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 06:54:57AM -0500, Peter A. Koren wrote:
> > What is the purpose of binary rpm packages in repositories with the
> > form:
> > 
> > thepackage-debuginfo-whatever.i386
> > 
> > as opposed to
> > 
> > thepackage-whatever.i386 ?
> 
> When an rpm is built, one of the last things done is a strip of the binary.
> This pulls all of the debugging symbols and leaves you with a reasonable
> size binary, with limited ability to debug that binary.  For the times you
> need to debug, those symbols are quite handy, so rpm (and conary) have made
> it possible to only install the missing parts if and when you need them.
> this saves a *ton* of space, debuginfo on a kernel is roughly 150MB
> compressed, almost 10x the size of the kernel itself.
> When building an rpm yourself, the creation of debuginfo is suppressed for
> everyone but root I believe on Fedora.  This can be changed by a
> modification to your rpm config file.  For conary troves, we automatically
> build debuginfo components if 'debugedit' is installed. 
> It should be noted that a debuginfo package does not include the executable
> binary, only the stripped debug symbols.  It really should have a
> dependancy on the runtime.
> If you want to see the difference debuginfo makes, try running a gdb
> session on an app without debuginfo installed then again on the same app with
> debuginfo installed.  It really makes debugging much easier.  You may see a
> developer ask you to install debuginfo for a package that you have
> submitted a bug against, and provide a backtrace.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Justin M. Forbes
> Kernel Engineer
> rpath, Inc.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks Justin.

-- Pete