Symbol files for debugger

Development
1

How do I find find the symbol files for the haiku OS and applications so the debugger can resolve the source files?

2

You have to build the parts of Haiku (no “OS” btw) you’re interested in with debugging enabled. For that you have to modify your “UserBuildConfig”, see the UserBuildConfig.Readme.

For example, if you’re interested in StyledEdit add:

SetConfigVar DEBUG : HAIKU_TOP src apps stylededit : 1 : global ;

Then just build StyledEdit with jam -q StyledEdit and run the new binary.

If you want to debug 3rd party apps, it depends on their build system. If it uses Haiku’s makefile-engine, a simple “DEBUGGER := TRUE” does the trick.

3

Thank you very much! Just out of interest, do the executable files that get produced have symbols inline or are they in a separate file a-la Microsoft’s PDB files?

Thanks,

Dave

4

Not sure about the specifics, but there are no additional files.

5

Actually, there can be. By default the debug information is in the binaries, but it can be extracted. There are some rules in haikuporter to do this, but too few recipes are using them. We should do it more, as it reduces the size of the runtime packages.
Maybe a task for next year GCI.