Re: [PATCH 2/2] Kbuild: Add a option to enable dwarf4

Andi Kleen
2014-07-20T21:17:31Z

On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 09:23:15PM +0200, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 01:16:12AM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > From: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
> >
> > I found that a lot of unresolvable variables when using gdb on the kernel
> > become resolvable when dwarf4 is enabled. So add a Kconfig flag to enable it.
> >
> > It definitely increases the debug information size, but on the other
> > hand this isn't so bad when debug fusion is used.
>
> Would it not make sense to try to enable degug info like this:
> First try -gdwarf-4
> If this fails try -gdwarf-3
> If this fails try -gdwarf-2
> And if this also fails fallback to -g
>
> We could then us a Kconfig option to enable the highest debug level - where 4 for now is the highest.
> On the other hand if most people have revent utils then they all have -gdwarf-4 supported
> and then it is no big deal.

I made it a separate option, because dwarf4 is somewhat bigger than dwarf3 and it's
probably only useful for people actively using gdb/crash
(and I don't think others users like systemtap/perf probe do dwarf4 yet)

If debug fusion was default it would be fine, but right now it would
need converting a lot of debuginfo packaing scripts first.

-Andi