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#1 2022-05-13 14:38:57

hoschi
Member
From: Ulm (Germany)
Registered: 2008-11-03
Posts: 457

Enable debug option?

Hello!
I have the debug option turned on in a package I maintain on AUR. Like the  vanilla package does. The argument that users can easily build the package themselves with makepkg is compelling. I assumed it is wise to keep aligned to the official package and allow easy debugging.

Would you prefer debug enabled for packages in AUR? Neither the wiki nor the man-pages provide a recommendation.

Thank you

Last edited by hoschi (2022-05-13 14:39:42)

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#2 2022-05-14 20:08:13

Lone_Wolf
Member
From: Netherlands, Europe
Registered: 2005-10-04
Posts: 11,868

Re: Enable debug option?

Debug symbols are mainly useful for getting debug traces for runtime troubleshooting.

I have it enabled in some of my aur packages that are openmw related (without debug symbols crash reports are not very useful for openmw devs).
My other aur packages don't enable them though.

Are you or users of that package actively filing bug reports upstream that benefit from good debug traces ?

If yes, enable it.


Sidenote:
I have only noticed minor downsides of building with debug symbols : on-disk size increases , time to build is somewhat longer
no runtime downsides though.


Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.


(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

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#3 2022-05-16 09:03:57

hoschi
Member
From: Ulm (Germany)
Registered: 2008-11-03
Posts: 457

Re: Enable debug option?

Thank you Lone_Wolf!

The patchset is small but I don't see any drawback. It is merely the AUR-Helper reacting weird.
Indeed debug symbols are always preferable. Symbols increase the required disk size, but are not loaded into main-memory and don't slow down execution.

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#4 2022-05-16 09:55:01

Lone_Wolf
Member
From: Netherlands, Europe
Registered: 2005-10-04
Posts: 11,868

Re: Enable debug option?

hoschi wrote:

It is merely the AUR-Helper reacting weird.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Debugging/Getting_traces#Compilation_options wrote:

As of pacman 4.1, makepkg.conf(5) has debug compilation flags in DEBUG_CFLAGS and DEBUG_CXXFLAGS. To use them, enable the debug makepkg option, and disable strip.

pacman 4.1.0 was released in 2013 , so makepkg can deal with it since then. (it just wasn't used much until recently)

I'd say by now any aur helper that doesn't support creating debug packages should at the very least be working on supporting it.

Maybe a new column "debug packages" could be added to the comparison tables in the wiki.


Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.


(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

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