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Re: [PATCH v2] Add support for the --readnever command-line option (DWARF only)
- From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>
- To: Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj at redhat dot com>
- Cc: palves at redhat dot com, qiyaoltc at gmail dot com, brobecker at adacore dot com, gdb-patches at sourceware dot org
- Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 17:59:33 +0200
- Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] Add support for the --readnever command-line option (DWARF only)
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <1467838463-15786-1-git-send-email-brobecker@adacore.com> <CAH=s-PMEfPZKPEUPJyGe8skZYE-Th5AP_SSGwz0VSkmfb_Op0Q@mail.gmail.com> <d9cdbae0-3ccd-e1fd-c9ab-8da83114a97a@redhat.com> <87o9ntddb6.fsf_-_@redhat.com>
- Reply-to: Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>
> From: Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj@redhat.com>
> Cc: Yao Qi <qiyaoltc@gmail.com>, Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>, "gdb-patches\@sourceware.org" <gdb-patches@sourceware.org>
> Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2017 19:54:53 -0500
>
> - The patch appears to have been introduced as a workaround, at
> least initially;
> - The patch is far from perfect, as it simply shunts the load of
> DWARF debugging information, without really worrying about the
> other debug format.
> - Who really does non-symbolic debugging anyways?
>
> One use of this is when a user simply wants to do the following
> sequence: attach, dump core, detach. Loading the debugging information
> in this case is an unnecessary cause of delay.
This use case should be mentioned in the manual. And I think if we
want to accept a patch that is DWARF specific, the name of the option
should reflect that; --readnever sounds misleading to me.
(Another possibility would be to have a "maint dwarf" command to do
the same; maybe it's better.)
> diff --git a/gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo b/gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo
> index ab05a3718d..7d3d651185 100644
> --- a/gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo
> +++ b/gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo
> @@ -1037,6 +1037,14 @@ Read each symbol file's entire symbol table immediately, rather than
> the default, which is to read it incrementally as it is needed.
> This makes startup slower, but makes future operations faster.
>
> +@item --readnever
> +@cindex @code{--readnever}
> +Do not read each symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes
> +startup faster but at the expense of not being able to perform
> +symbolic debugging.
> +
> +This option is currently limited to debug information in DWARF format.
> +For all other format, this option has no effect.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"For the others formats"
And I think we need a NEWS entry for this new feature.
Thanks.