DWARF-2 is a format to store debugging information. It is used on many ELF systems such as GNU/Linux. With the way things are compiled, there is a lot of redundant information in the DWARF-2 sections of an ELF binary.

Fortunately, there is an option to gcc that helps dealing with the redundant information and downsizes the DWARF-2 sections of ELF binaries. This option is -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with C++.

With -g alone, libxul.so is 468 MB. With -g -feliminate-dwarf2-dups, it is... 1.5 GB. FAIL.

The good news is that as stated in the message linked above, -gdwarf-4 does indeed help reducing debugging information size. libxul.so, built with -gdwarf-4 is 339 MB. This however requires gcc 4.6 and a pretty recent gdb.

2011-07-30 11:21:01+0900

p.d.o, p.m.o

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