Re: Questions regarding substitutes with debug output

[Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Olivier Dion <olivier.dion@polymtl.ca> writes:

> On Sat, 23 Apr 2022, Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> When the package uses the gnu-build-system, it is usually just adding a
>> "debug" outputs and the copying of the stripped symbols to this output
>> is taken care of automatically.  Some packages use their own flags or a
>> release build without symbols in which case just adding "debug" alone
>> won't be enough.
>
> Right.  My guess is that project using autotools are handled
> automagically.  Although, I don't know of any configuration option for
> splitting debug symbols from binaries in autotools.

If you are curious, it's defined in the 'strip' phase in (guix build
gnu-build-system).  By default Autoconf causes the builds to include the
debug symbols (-g).  In the usual case (no "debug" output defined on a
Guix package), these debug symbols are simply stripped (using 'strip',
part of GNU binutils) and discarded.  When the "debug" output exists,
the debug symbols are instead copied to the debug output.

It should also work with the other C/C++ build systems such as
meson-build-system or cmake-build-system so long as they generate debug
symbols by default (which they should).

I hope that helps,

Maxim