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axelgenus · 2007-08-25 15:39:07

Hi guys,

around six months have passed but still I haven't been able to found a distro as good as Archlinux (is the only distro I kept for more than 6 months). I left this distro for various reasons. I would like to know if things changed:

1. x86_64 port: how is going?
2. X.org 1.3 and Intel drivers 2.x are still in testing repo... when they will be merged in current?
3. Are available developments packages and debug symbols for the various applications (like -dbg and -dev packages in Fedora and Debian)?
4. Is anything else new/worth knowing about?

Thanks. I hope to come back "home" A.S.A.P.

Last edited by axelgenus (2007-08-25 15:59:27)

hussam · 2007-08-25 16:15:18

Xorg 1.3 should be in soon unless I am mistaken. You'll have to ask the devs about this.
About the -dev packages, archlinux's packages contain the dev headers. They aren't split up into seperate -dev packages.

axelgenus · 2007-08-25 16:25:15

hussam wrote:

Xorg 1.3 should be in soon unless I am mistaken. You'll have to ask the devs about this.
About the -dev packages, archlinux's packages contain the dev headers. They aren't split up into seperate -dev packages.

Good, but what about debug packages? I remember I was not able to get a decent stack trace... I had to recompile packages with ABS.

bigbob73 · 2007-08-25 16:31:03

I installed x86_64 yesterday. Seems a few packages missing, but not many. Went really well.

Snowman · 2007-08-26 04:42:21

1. x86_64 port is going well. Lots of progress, like package availability, were made in the last months.
3. The packages are usually stripped, therefore they don't have debug symbols.
4 You can check the front page news. Most important changes are posted in them.

bigbob73: Out of curiosity, what packages were missing?

axelgenus · 2007-08-26 07:22:34

Snowman wrote:

1. x86_64 port is going well. Lots of progress, like package availability, were made in the last months.

Glad to hear it...

Snowman wrote:

3. The packages are usually stripped, therefore they don't have debug symbols.

This is one of the major problem I had: Archlinux is updated really fast and this would give the chance to debug recent software (i.e. latest release of GNOME, KDE and others). I often give a hand in "bug hunting days" but without debug symbols I were unable to. One question: why are debug symbols removed? They take some HDD space but nothing else...

Snowman wrote:

4 You can check the front page news. Most important changes are posted in them.

Already done...

bigbob73 · 2007-08-26 11:28:15

Snowman wrote:

1. x86_64 port is going well. Lots of progress, like package availability, were made in the last months.
3. The packages are usually stripped, therefore they don't have debug symbols.
4 You can check the front page news. Most important changes are posted in them.
bigbob73: Out of curiosity, what packages were missing?

Nothing major. i didn't see gkrellm, but not a biggie. Haven't had time to finish setting everything up, so others may come up, but nothing major.

skoal · 2007-08-30 03:08:17

Snowman wrote:

1. x86_64 port is going well. Lots of progress, like package availability, were made in the last months.

Sweeeeet.

Snowman wrote:

3. The packages are usually stripped, therefore they don't have debug symbols.

Sweeeeeter!

Snowman wrote:

4 You can check the front page news. Most important changes are posted in them.

Sweeeeeeeeetesttt, err wait, what. Damn. Just when I was about to pencil your name in on the 2008 November ballot, you go ahead and make me do some research.

No problemo. I'll go ahead and check out the front page anyways, but pencil you in as VP instead Frosty.

Anyways, you x64 devs are better than a can of beer and a moist Honduran cigar while floating atop my nephews alligator floaty in my pool. That says a lot. Really.

axelgenus · 2007-08-30 06:04:35

Still no one answered me... why debug symbols are stripped?

STiAT · 2007-08-30 06:42:16

Can't trust my eyes. Are you back, skoal?

twiistedkaos · 2007-08-30 06:58:15

axelgenus wrote:

Still no one answered me... why debug symbols are stripped?

Not sure, probably not KISS? Anyways, the new gnome package(front page of arch) has full debug symbols if you wish you use that

axelgenus · 2007-08-30 07:56:48

Well, KISS is not the best method in most cases. Debug symbols are optional in all the main pre-compiled distros.

However, I'm glad to know that GNOME packages have debug symbols because is my preferred DE. Thank you...

hussam · 2007-08-30 08:19:32

axelgenus, unless you intend on reporting a lot of bugs to gnome's bugzilla, do you really need debug symbols for all applications? I only have gtk+/glib2/libgnomeui and a few other applications like rhythmbox and nautilus with debug symbols.

Last edited by hussam (2007-08-30 08:21:10)

axelgenus · 2007-08-30 08:23:58

hussam wrote:

axelgenus, unless you intend on reporting a lot of bugs to gnome's bugzilla, do you really need debug symbols? I only have gtk+/glib2/libgnomeui and a few other applications like rhythmbox and nautilus with debug symbols.

I often give a hand in "bug hunting days" but without debug symbols I were unable to.

Yes, you're right, not every package is so important to debug applications but recompiling GTK+ and other "huge" packages takes alot of time. I passed over from Gentoo exactly because of this (I wasted 1/3 of time compiling sources for every update)...

shining · 2007-08-30 09:19:18

axelgenus wrote:

However, I'm glad to know that GNOME packages have debug symbols because is my preferred DE. Thank you...

It's only the packages of 2.19 (development serie of gnome) which contain debug symbols. They are in an unofficial repo, and are just for preparing to the stable 2.20 release, which probably won't have debug symbols.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 10#p276910

axelgenus · 2007-08-30 09:40:37

shining wrote:

It's only the packages of 2.19 (development serie of gnome) which contain debug symbols. They are in an unofficial repo, and are just for preparing to the stable 2.20 release, which probably won't have debug symbols.

At least I can help GNOME dev team with bug reports for the 2.20 beta series...

However... I still don't understand why they are stripped from every binary in the ufficial repository: they don't waste too much HDD space, they don't waste RAM (they are used only with a debugger), they even help devs to debug code...

shining · 2007-08-30 09:43:19

axelgenus wrote:

At least I can help GNOME dev team with bug reports for the 2.20 beta series...
However... I still don't understand why they are stripped from every binary in the ufficial repository: they don't waste too much HDD space, they don't waste RAM (they are used only with a debugger), they even help devs to debug code...

Are you so sure about that?

axelgenus · 2007-08-30 09:53:31

Hell yeah! I've tried LFS and the toolchain's debug symbols waste about 70MB... Moreover is that the reason because other distros makes optional packages for them. IMHO stripping them and not making them available (expecially on "bleeding edge" distros) is not the right choise.

shining · 2007-08-30 10:07:43

axelgenus wrote:

Hell yeah! I've tried LFS and the toolchain's debug symbols waste about 70MB... Moreover is that the reason because other distros makes optional packages for them. IMHO stripping them and not making them available (expecially on "bleeding edge" distros) is not the right choise.

No, but that's the stupid choice, and Arch is very proud of that (and its KISS slogan).

Edit : But the fact that other distribs do it is a good reason for not doing it actually. Otherwise Arch would just be another pointless distrib, not original in any way (like a thousand others).

Last edited by shining (2007-08-30 10:10:11)

axelgenus · 2007-08-30 10:31:40

shining wrote:

... the fact that other distribs do it is a good reason for not doing it actually. Otherwise Arch would just be another pointless distrib, not original in any way (like a thousand others).

That's not true. Arch has many differences from other distros... Providing debug symbols in some way may contribute to make this distro better.

rson451 · 2007-08-30 22:01:49

i may be sticking my mouth into something i dont fully understand here, but if 95% of users would never use debug symbols, and there is an option to compile your own version of the program (via abs), why should arch include debug symbols by default and waste both harddrive space AND bandwidth of the users and mirrors? You said yourself you could recompile from abs and get your desired result. I just dont understand what the big deal is here.

Dusty · 2007-08-31 02:11:12

Skoal, baby, are you really posting? stick around, man, stick around!!

\\_//_ or something...

Axelgenus: In my memory, nobody's ever asked about debugging symbols before. I'm not a dev, but I would suspect the reasoning was thus: If you are in requirement of debugging symbols, you intend to do some debugging. If you intend to do debugging, you probably intend to work on the software. If you intend to work on the software you will have to recompile it anyway. So at that time you can compile with debugging symbols in place. I suspect you are one of very few people who would use debugging symbols without needing to actually compile the software. Another reason may be that its so dead simple to recompile packages under Arch.

I still haven't answered your question as to why its not included in the first place, but I suspect its for the same reason that documentation is stripped -- it takes up room that ninety-odd percent of users don't need or can find elsewhere.

Dusty

axelgenus · 2007-08-31 06:20:43

rson451: I don't know if you ever compiled something like Glibc, QT, GTK+, X.org, GNOME, KDE or even Firefox... it last forever. An example: with Gentoo Firefox 2.0 takes up to 2 hours to compile on my machine depending on the USE flags I set. Now imagine to recompile it every time it's updated (in Arch packages are updated faster than in other distro) and you should guess why I would like to avoid it. When you report a bug and developers ask for an usable stack trace it's very annoying to recompile the buggy application only to re-create debug symbols.

Dusty: thank you for the answer but as I stated before debug symbols would be very useful for the 1% of developers out there that would like to use Arch and not to waste hours recompiling. Moreover GCC automatically creates them and (as for the documentation) they could be simply packaged in another repository or you could just append a simple suffix as other distros' maintainers do.

However, let's quit it here... mine is a suggestion.

tony5429 · 2007-09-07 18:12:01

regarding arch64, I use it for my desktop system and am quit pleased with it. The only problems I have with it is the lack of flash support, which is slowly being solved with gnash, and inability to run stellarium - a quirk i've not found any support regarding.

kagerato · 2007-09-12 02:39:38

axelgenus wrote:

rson451: I don't know if you ever compiled something like Glibc, QT, GTK+, X.org, GNOME, KDE or even Firefox... it last forever. An example: with Gentoo Firefox 2.0 takes up to 2 hours to compile on my machine depending on the USE flags I set.

Two hours? Wow. On my NetBurst desktop (3.2 GHz, 2 MiB L2), it takes ~50 minutes.

Firefox is one of the hardest of all packages to build in terms of time and CPU power. Glibc is on the same level. X, if you don't actually build much of what you're not using, is not too awful. Building all of X is insane, though; it's practically an operating system unto itself.

And then the desktop environments are huge sets of programs, so to compile them faster you must exclude many applications.

One fact about gcc: C++ compilation rate is pretty bad. It generates fast, compliant code, but it does it slowly.

C and C++ are not very quick-build languages at all, especially when you're talking about projects that have the build overheard of the autotools chain. Running configure and automake all the time before the actual compilation begins takes time.

Contrast that situation to a language like free pascal, where the build time for even rather big projects like the lazarus IDE is only a few seconds. Language and compiler design make a gigantic difference.

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