Re: enable/disable-debug options to libstdc++-v3

[Phil Edwards <phil at jaj dot com>]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 04:29:00PM +0530, Ranjit Mathew wrote:
> Now I did read in the configure.in comments that
> these flags should not be specified for production
> builds, but the problem is that I need to specify
> --disable-debug for other parts of GCC and the top-level
> configure blindly passes all flags to all components.
> 
> Can these flags not be changed to "-g0" when
> "--enable-debug=no"?
> 
> Does it really make sense to say that "--disable-debug"
> would mean that debug information would be put in
> anyways?

The point of --enable-debug, when it was first written into libstdc++,
was to add /extra/ debugging information, mostly for our own use.

Are you certain that the increased size is due to debug information?
If that is the case, then

    1)  you can experiment with running 'strip' on the library, with
        various options, and
    2)  debug information is not loaded into memory at runtime; it takes
        up extra space on disk, but the memory footprint will not change.

Try running 'strip' with different options, and if the size changes
significantly, then it's debug information, and if the size is the same,
then it's something else.


> (For some reason, explicit definition of "DEBUG_FLAGS=-g0"
> in the top-level make's command line does not seem to
> percolate to libstdc++-v3.)

Right, most of the stuff from the top level is passed to the host tools (the
new compiler, linker, etc), but does not get passed to the target libraries.
That's actually by design.


Phil

-- 
I would therefore like to posit that computing's central challenge, viz. "How
not to make a mess of it," has /not/ been met.
                                                 - Edsger Dijkstra, 1930-2002