Release builds on Windows include Deubg symbols, but not on Linux about vcpkg

[dg0yt]

Maybe time to collect useful resources? But I don't know where to start.

https://www.tweag.io/blog/2023-11-23-debug-fission/

[Osyotr]

Would it be a reasonable addition to add -g to Release builds on Linux?

IMHO yes.
Though storing debug symbols on Linux is a major PITA.

[russelltg]

We use debuginfod internally. It rocks

[Osyotr]

Do you use it on dev machines too?

[WangWeiLin-MV]

Some information

The option CMAKE_<LANG>_FLAGS_<CONFIG> first introduced in eba9f6a while added /Zi, and update to /Z7 in 26516fe with current options, and eventually inherited to scripts/toolchains/windows.cmake.

For the option CMAKE_<LANG>_FLAGS_<CONFIG>_INIT in scripts/toolchains/linux.cmake, it introduced in f35ff4c.

It seems there is no special instructions for adding debug info options

Referrence

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/z7-zi-zi-debug-information-format?view=msvc-170
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-14.1.0/gcc/Debugging-Options.html

[russelltg]

@WangWeiLin-MV sure, I understand it's not too difficult to add them manually (and that's what I did for us). However, the issue here is about the inconsistent defaults. On Windows, you just get symbols by default. On linux, by defaut, you don't.

People here are talking about symbol storage/splitting as well. In my opinion, this is out of scope for vcpkg (it doesn't do storage for windows either), but a great way to do symbol storage on Linux is build with symbols, store the binaries in a place accessiable by a debuginfod server, then strip the binaries you ship to customers. Then debuggers (lldb and gdb both support this) can be pointed to your server to download the debug symbols. It can even download executables in cases like coredumps that those are not available.

(I'm now worried I misread your comment...not sure if you're saying "no special instruction" as in "current state is fine" or that "it would not be special/difficult to pass -g by default")

[WangWeiLin-MV]

@russelltg Sorry for not making it clearer. I only looked into the change history and found that there's no comments or documents was given about the options added many years ago, so further research is needed on current issue.