Re: Nonsense in manpage of strip?

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Michael,

> > >   1.<Link the executable as normal.>
> > >   2.<Copy "foo" to  "foo.full">
> > >   3.<Run "strip --strip-debug foo">
> > >   4.<Run "objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink=foo.full foo">
> > >
> > > Shouldn't Step 4 not simply be '<Copy "foo.full" to "foo">'?

> > No, the --add-gnu-debuglink switch actually causes objcopy to insert a 
> > new section (.gnu.debuglink) into the program it is copying.  This 
> > section is used by debuggers to locate the stripped out debug 
> > information when they load the "foo" executable.

> Yes, but 'foo.full' is already the 'foo' executable with included debugging
> information, because in Step 2 we just preserved that as 'foo.full'. Why
> should i copy that information into the stripped program, when i can achieve 
> the same result by just taking the unstripped version?

Because you do not copy all of the debug information from foo.full into 
full.  Instead objcopy merely creates a new section called 
.gnu.debuglink which contains a description of how to find the foo.full 
executable.  Thus you still have a stripped "foo" executable which is 
only slightly bigger than at the end of step 3, but which can now be 
debugged by debuggers which understand about how to use the 
.gnu.debuglink section.

Cheers
  Nick