Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:13:44 -0600 From: Eric Schuele <e.schuele@computer.org> To: Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 6.0R GENERIC makeoptions DEBUG=-g [Slightly OT] Message-ID: <4378C5C8.2010409@computer.org> In-Reply-To: <20051114114450.W66587@fledge.watson.org> References: <436BCD90.40709@interfone.net> <43784DC6.4000809@interfone.net> <20051114114450.W66587@fledge.watson.org>
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Robert Watson wrote: > > On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Simon Ironside wrote: > >> /sys/i386/conf/GENERIC has this line uncommented - is this on purpose? >> I commented it out before building a new kernel. >> >> makeoptions DEBUG=-g > > > This was by accident, but actually isn't a bad idea. We discovered the > problem at the last minute, after the 6.0-R builds had completed, and as > they were rsyncing to mirrors. After thinking about it for a few > minutes, we decided that actually, it has some nice benefits that made > it worth not rebuilding and re-mirroring. If we were earlier in the > release cycle, we might have changed the setting, however. > > We identified a few specific upsides and downsides: > > Good: We now have debugging symbols easily available and widely > accessible for the GENERIC kernel shipped with the release. This makes > it much easier for developers to debug problems using that kernel, as we > no longer need to ask end-users to build a kernel with debugging > symbols, etc, in order to debug a problem. Especially for a .0 release, > this is a very useful, and has presented a problem in previous releases. > > Bad: Kernel build times are now significantly slower, and required space > to build a kernel significantly larger by default. > > We'll see how it settles out -- CPUs are a lot larger, and disks a lot > bigger than they used to be. The kernel is stripped of debugging > symbols before it is installed, so this is only potentially a problem on > systems that already have enough space to hold source, builds, etc, and > doesn't affect systems where the kernel is installed but not built. > I.e., this doesn't affect the footprint for embedded systems, or systems > where a kernel is built centrally and then distributed. > > My recommendation would be to leave -g in unless you know that the added > build time and disk space for the build process will be a problem for > you. If I were to decide to remove this, and I have a small config file which includes GENERIC, what directive would I use. For example, with a device I wish to remove I can use nodevice... for options, nooptions. nomakeoptions maybe? Also... I once saw someone ask this and never saw a reply.... Where can I find documentation of the above mentioned mechanism? Thanks. > Hopefully you don't ever run into any problems requiring debug > symbols, but if you do it will probably save you some time and hassle, > especially if it's a problem that occurs once every six months, in which > case rebooting with a kernel with known symbol layout will mean waiting > six months to debug the problem. :-) > > Robert N M Watson > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to > "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > -- Regards, Eric
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