13 Installing Debugging Files

Program binaries, as produced by the GCC compilers for instance, are typically written in the ELF format, with a section containing debugging information. Debugging information is what allows the debugger, GDB, to map binary code to source code; it is required to debug a compiled program in good conditions.

This chapter explains how to use separate debug info when packages provide it, and how to rebuild packages with debug info when it’s missing.