kernel debuginfo size

[Nicholas Miell]

On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 17:09 +0200, Pekka Pietikainen wrote:
> Err... would it be possible to get some solution for the "Help!
> I just want to run oprofile and systemtap" scenario?
> 
> -rw-rw-r--    1 ftp      ftp      459625793 Mar 02 09:20 kernel-debuginfo-2.6.15-1.2008_FC5.i686.rpm
> 
> is just not fun. Especially when a (uncompressed) 40MB vmlinux is all I
> usually want from there.


What the world really needs is a tool that'll remove redundant DWARF
data[1].

Ideally, such a tool could remove redundant data within an object, or
between multiple objects (by specifying that one object -- libc.so.6,
vmlinux -- is the authoritative DWARF source and removing copies from
everything else). Discarding data that isn't actually used would be
good, too, but gcc does that right now and manages to screw it up (re:
enums), so you'd have to be extra careful.


[1] If a.c and b.c both include z.h, a.o and b.o will both have DWARF
info for z.h, and if you link a.o and b.o together, you'll get two
copies of that DWARF data in the resulting object. Now consider that
sched.h is a) big and b) included by most everything in the kernel and
that there are other headers just like it...

-- 
Nicholas Miell <nmiell at comcast.net>