Designs for better debug info in GCC

[Chris Lattner]

On Dec 21, 2007, at 4:09 PM, Andrew Pinski wrote:

> On 12/21/07, Andrew Pinski <pinskia@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 21 Dec 2007 16:02:38 -0800, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com>  
>> wrote:
>>> Like it or not, the large size of debug information is a serious  
>>> issue
>>> for many people.
>>
>> Link times are hurt by large size of debugging information.  I have
>> many many complaints from some users of the PS3 toolchain that link
>> times are huge and from my investigation, found the size of the
>> debugging info contributed to most (if not all) of the increased link
>> times.
>
> I forgot to mention the increase in debugging information about
> prologue and eplogue (made by RTH) between 4.0.2 and 4.1.1 made the
> link time increase a huge amount.

It's worth noting that not all systems store debug information in  
executables.  On Mac OS 10.5, the linker leaves debug info in the .o  
files instead of copying it into the executable.  As such, size of  
debug info doesn't significantly affect link-time or executable size  
(but it can obviously affect time to launch the debugger).  I'm sure  
there are other systems that do similar things.

If debug info size and link time is really such a serious problem for  
so many users, perhaps people developing the gnu toolchain should  
investigate an extension like this.

-Chris