As a buildd admin, I want to congratulate the original policy on all the wasted cpu cycles it has cost my system by forcing packages to compile with -g even though those same binaries will be stripped later of this costly debugging information.
Now, what I want to propose, is not a change so much as an ammendment. Keep the policy there (which is meant to make it easier to build binaries and libraries with debugging information), but add an ammendment for this situation: -------- The package can by default build without -g if it also provides a mechanism to easily be rebuilt with debugging information. This can be done by providing a "build-debug" make target, or allowing the user to specify "BUILD_DEBUG=yes" in the environment while compiling that package. -------- Now this has several added benefits: 1) It is actually easier to build debugging bins and libraries this way (no more editing debian/rules or similar) since it provides a documented way of getting this type of build. 2) There will be much less wasted cpu time for the autobuilders since not having debugging information (and hence also not having to strip it) will increase the speed of compiles. This skips an entire pass of the compiler, iirc Please, I would simply like to get a second on this and have it voted on or whatever it is that we do with policy proposals now-a-days. Then added to policy. I don't want to argue over the ten million technical points, and considering this is very unobtrusive, and allows the maintainer to choose (not force) whether or not to abide by it, it shouldn't provide much flame material, nor extensive discussion about the pro's and con's. Thanks, Ben
