<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [ <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../general.ent"> %general-entities; ]> <sect1 id="ch-system-aboutdebug"> <?dbhtml filename="aboutdebug.html"?> <title>About Debugging Symbols</title> <para>Most programs and libraries are, by default, compiled with debugging symbols included (with <command>gcc</command>'s <parameter>-g</parameter> option). This means that when debugging a program or library that was compiled with debugging information included, the debugger can provide not only memory addresses, but also the names of the routines and variables.</para> <para>However, the inclusion of these debugging symbols enlarges a program or library significantly. The following is an example of the amount of space these symbols occupy:</para> <itemizedlist> <listitem> <para>A <command>bash</command> binary with debugging symbols: 1200 KB</para> </listitem> <listitem> <para>A <command>bash</command> binary without debugging symbols: 480 KB</para> </listitem> <listitem> <para>Glibc and GCC files (<filename class="directory">/lib</filename> and <filename class="directory">/usr/lib</filename>) with debugging symbols: 87 MB</para> </listitem> <listitem> <para>Glibc and GCC files without debugging symbols: 16 MB</para> </listitem> </itemizedlist> <para>Sizes may vary depending on which compiler and C library were used, but when comparing programs with and without debugging symbols, the difference will usually be a factor between two and five.</para> <para>Because most users will never use a debugger on their system software, a lot of disk space can be regained by removing these symbols. The next section shows how to strip all debugging symbols from the programs and libraries.</para> </sect1>