Re: [PATCH] Fix for linker build ID in Fedora 8

[Lubomir Kundrak <lkundrak@redhat.com>]

On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 07:35 -0500, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 11:28 +0100, Lubomir Kundrak wrote:
> 
> > > I attach the patch I use. The first hunk is basically the same as yours,
> > > the second one is self-explanatory.
> > 
> > Actually, the first hunk should better look like this:
> > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2007-11/msg00187.html
> 
> The objcopy test exists to detect certain breakage in objcopy.  I'm not
> sure that testing it in the condition that it only copies .text is
> sufficient to find the original problem.  Surely, that will need some
> software archeology.  The test comes from GRUB 1.  Anyway, I'll rather
> test objcopy under conditions close to those used in the build process.

To be honest, I'm not completely sure either.

> And what's the build ID for?  Why do we want to keep it?

It basically makes it possible to match an executable or library with
its core dump and sources it was compiled for. The latter is achieved by
placing the sources to build-specific directory.

In Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, debugging information (debugging
symbols and source code) are packged together in -debuginfo packages.
Since Fedora 8 it is for example possible to comfortably find the
debugging information and respective binary package when everything you
have is the core dump. You can have multiple versions debugging
informations for different builds of the same package installed at the
same time and debugger will find the matching code. Moreover, package
that doesn't link with build id won't build in our build system, unless
you work around it (which would you do for example if you were building
encumbered binary-only package, which is definitely not the case).

-- 
Lubomir Kundrak (Red Hat Security Response Team)