Alternatives to generate debug information for c/cpp/rust

[snehasish]

I came across the symbolization support page for cpp and the steps documented to add debug information. There are a couple of options in clang and gcc which can be more effective.

1. The -g (equivalent to -g2) flag generates a lot of debug information, most of which is unnecessary for symbolization. You can reduce the amount of debug information to only line tables by using -gmlt or -g1.

2. The -gsplit-dwarf flag can generate debug information in a separate file. This helps reduce memory (and time) when linking large binaries with debug information in them. The debug information for each object file is placed in a .dwo file which can then be linked together to a single .dwp file. I believe this will save the objcopy steps.

Have you considered using these options?

[brancz]

Great questions!

The -g (equivalent to -g2) flag generates a lot of debug information, most of which is unnecessary for symbolization. You can reduce the amount of debug information to only line tables by using -gmlt or -g1.

Absolutely, line tables are sufficient for our purposes. I'll make sure we adapt the docs here!

The -gsplit-dwarf flag can generate debug information in a separate file. This helps reduce memory (and time) when linking large binaries with debug information in them. The debug information for each object file is placed in a .dwo file which can then be linked together to a single .dwp file. I believe this will save the objcopy steps.

At the moment we don't support dwarf packages, but we definitely want to!