[Development] Not stripping our binaries by default

Thiago Macieira thiago.macieira at intel.com
Fri Sep 14 17:37:22 CEST 2012


On sexta-feira, 14 de setembro de 2012 16.33.14, Robin Burchell wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 4:21 PM, Thomas Senyk
> 
> <thomas.senyk at pelagicore.com> wrote:
> > A argument for stripping as default:
> > A lot of people don't know what's the right thing to do in most cases ...
> > so
> The people building Qt generally know what they're doing. Either
> they're working on Qt (or things using Qt) - either case of which
> really requires debug information, or they're packagers - in which
> case, the debug info is also useful, as they split it out themselves.

Most people developing Qt are doing it with -prefix $PWD, which means no make 
install, which means no stripping.

And from experience, package managers are people handling hundreds if not 
thousands of packages and who will complain loudly at you for any deviation 
from the behaviour of autoconf & automake.

> Most people plain using Qt and not caring about the internals just
> install it through a package manager.

Which is why in my opinion we should make the packagers' lives easier. They're 
the ones who are getting our packages to most people out there. It's in our 
interest to make sure that they produce the right Qt without having to spend 
30 minutes figuring out what went wrong.

What's more, our behaviour is inconsistent with itself: it only strips release 
binaries. Using the -strip option will not cause it to strip debug binaries. 
E.g.:
	CXXFLAGS=-O2 configure -debug -strip
will not strip.

Still, I don't have time or interest to fight this. I've updated the submission 
with stripping as the default. I've also updated my own .spec file.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
     Intel Sweden AB - Registration Number: 556189-6027
     Knarrarnäsgatan 15, 164 40 Kista, Stockholm, Sweden
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