Because bugs are inevitable, developers need quick and easy access to the artifacts that debugging tools like Systemtap and GDB depend on, which are typically DWARF (Debugging With Attributed Record Formats) debuginfo or source files. Accessing these resources should not be an issue when debugging your own local build tree, but all too often they are not readily available.
For example, your distro might package debuginfo and source files separately from the executable you’re trying to debug and you may lack the permissions to install these packages. Or, perhaps you’re debugging within a container that was not built with these resources, or maybe you simply don’t want these files taking up space on your machine.
Debuginfo files are notorious for taking up large amounts of space, and it is not unusual for their size to be five to fifteen times that of the corresponding executable. debuginfod
aims to resolve these problems.
Continue reading “Introducing debuginfod, the elfutils debuginfo server”