Policy says binaries "should" (not "must") be stripped:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#s11.1 "Note that by default all installed binaries should be stripped, either by using the -s flag to install, or by calling strip on the binaries after they have been copied into debian/tmp but before the tree is made into a package." The upstream author of my new package xprint-xprintorg (upstream http://xprint.mozdev.org/) has requested (upstream bug http://mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=2264) that I don't strip the symbols out, a least for the first few releases, so we can get useful bug reports, noting that coredumps are not very useful without them. He comments: Xprt without symbols consumes 1545084 bytes Xprt with symbols consumes 1744827 bytes so there's not a huge difference in installed size by retaining the symbols, and an even smaller difference in the compressed packages. Why does policy ask us to strip binaries anyway? Is it merely to reduce storage and bandwidth costs? Could someone please clarify if it's appropriate to respect upstream's wishes to leave the symbols in? Drew -- PGP public key available at http://people.debian.org/~dparsons/drewskey.txt Fingerprint: A110 EAE1 D7D2 8076 5FE0 EC0A B6CE 7041 6412 4E4A
msg07576/pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
