Re: Debugging and source code

[Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl>]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 09:41:09PM +0100, Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, 25 Jan 2017 14:22:48 +0100
> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) wrote:
> 
> > Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl> skribis:
> > 
> > > Since we allow for debug symbols using :debug (great feature!), 
> 
> Aha? Why's that not available in our icecat package? I have to find out how it's done elsewhere and copy it :)

The beauty of it that it is already there - at least for the gnu build
system. Just add the debug output.

> > You can always get the right source code by running “guix build -S
> > package”.
> > 
> > OTOH having the source directly in the “debug” (or “source”?) output as
> > you suggest would be more convenient.
> > 
> > The only downside is the extra size of the “debug” output.  Most of the
> > time that’s a price people are happy to pay when they are installing the
> > “debug” output.  But sometimes maybe not.
> 
> Ahhh that's a difficult call. I think it would be best if we collected some statistics before we decided that. For example how big is the source code of a package versus the binary? On average? Depending on the language? How many % of the total size is the source code?

If we add debug output by default I suppose we don't have to
distribute binary packages. Likewise an output with source code
included. That means there would be no cost involved other than
building and testing.
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