Re: HEADS-UP: Enabling WITH_DEBUG_FILES by default

On Tuesday, October 27, 2015 06:09:37 PM Ed Maste wrote:
> On 11 February 2015 at 21:39, Glen Barber <gjb_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Within the next 24 hours, I will merge the release-install-debug branch
> > into head, which will enable building and installing stripped debugging
> > files by default.
> >
> > In general, this should have no significant impact, but any fallout will
> > be addressed as soon as possible after the merge.
> >
> > Those that do not want debugging files built/installed by default should
> > add 'WITHOUT_DEBUG_FILES=1' to src.conf(5).  This will also be noted in
> > UPDATING.
> 
> I want to pick this change up again. There are a few separate parts
> under discussion:
> 
> 1. Release build changes to support standalone debug
> 2. Installer changes
> 3. Switching debug files on by default
> 4. Separating into two or more debug dist sets
> 
> Glen's proposed merge from earlier this year included #1 through #3,
> but was held up based on discussion in this thread. I propose that we
> merge #1 and #2 now, since they're effectively a no-op if debug files
> aren't enabled, but facilitate further testing.

Sounds good.

> Separating the debug dist sets (into runtime and binaries, or even
> more fine-grained) requires coordination with the packaged base work,
> and I suggest that we hold off on that project for now.

Agreed.

> I'd like to flip the default shortly after and continue refining it
> with it enabled - we need to start finding and fix issues now in order
> to have it ready for 11.0. I have a review open for the default
> switch, in https://reviews.freebsd.org/D4018.

All ahead full!

I do think that packaged base is going to force us to revisit things
quite a bit in that you won't necessarily just install the equivalent
of base.txz all the time.  Long term I do think that is the solution
for folks wanting more fine-grained control over disk space as well
as the ability to "fault in" symbols on demand.

For whatever we are going to do for the graybeards like myself that
will still use make, I think that the only knob you would need for 4
is runtime vs everything else where runtime is libs + rtld.  Anything
finer-grained than that should be handled by pkg(8) instead.  For my
part I already set WITH_DEBUG_FILES=yes in /etc/src.conf on just about
all of my boxes and VMs (head or stable).

-- 
John Baldwin