large binary, why not strip ?

Masoom Shaikh masoom.shaikh at gmail.com
Wed Nov 19 07:27:50 PST 2008


On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 5:38 AM, Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 08:42:12AM +0000, Masoom Shaikh wrote:
> > most of the programs installed from ports have large binary size on disk
> >
> > stripping em all reduces their size dramatically
> >
> > I cannot see the reason for not stripping them by default ?
> >
> > do I miss anything ?
>
> I haven't seen anyone point out the downside to stripping binaries and
> libraries: removal of debugging symbols.


Agreed. But not every 'user'  is interested in backtrace. It can be argued
user can
send the trace to someone who is. Well my only point is choice, I should
have
choice to install un-stripped bins only if I wish, since for those who have
no idea
what such symbols are, backtrace is some kind of boring text.

I don't like bins for which `nm` does not give me symbols :)
I was just wondering if installing stripped bins may save small space for
those
of whom PC means mail, IM, mp3, orkut etc....

 "The apebajs program suddenly
> crashes in some library, here's the now-completely-useless backtrace".
> The user is then forced to go back and recompile *everything* to get
> debugging symbols.
>
> The non-stripping situation is on a per-port basis, AFAIK.  Not all
> ports have WITH_DEBUG.
>
> --
> | Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
> | Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
> | UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
> | Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
>
>


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