Debugging information in MinGW packages

Kevin Kofler kevin.kofler at chello.at
Wed Feb 25 13:46:39 UTC 2009


Hi,

what's the correct way to handle debugging information in MinGW packages?

Currently, mingw32-nsis builds everything with debugging information (due to
the debian-debug-opt patch), even the MinGW parts, but the MinGW debugging
information is not extracted, so it's included within the binaries. This is
particularly annoying for NSIS installers as it bloats the installer stubs.
For example, the lzma_solid stub is 210185 bytes, running a MinGW strip on
it reduces it to 55296 bytes.

Do we really want debugging information in the MinGW stuff even if it can't
be extracted into separate -debuginfo? Or should the MinGW portions of NSIS
be built without -g instead? Should the same policy apply to everything or
should NSIS be special? (I can see why a developer would want to have
debugging information for a library, but for an installer?)

        Kevin Kofler




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