Let's talk about +debug

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Apr 19, 2012, at 2:21 PM, Blair Zajac wrote:
> On 04/19/2012 10:16 AM, Joshua Root wrote:
>> On 2012-4-20 02:40 , Sean Farley wrote:
>>> I'd like to discuss /review the latest patch here:
>>> 
>>> https://trac.macports.org/ticket/33821
>>> 
>>> As I point out in the ticket, it is extremely useful to retain
>>> debugging symbols for libraries (optionally set with +debug). My
>>> co-workers and I have been using this for about two years now with no
>>> problems whatsoever and we'd like to see it in the core of macports.
>>> Thoughts?
>> 
>> I don't doubt this is useful to you, but I really don't want to have to
>> support it. It's inevitably not going to work right in some cases, and
>> when you provide a variant people understandably expect it to work. The
>> target audience is also comparatively small.
>> 
>> At this point I'd probably rather not accept it at all, and just let you
>> continue to provide it as a third party patch. If we did decide to
>> include it, I'd at least want it off by default with a config knob for
>> those who know they need it.
> 
> When you're debugging something, having debugging symbols available in the package management system is very handy, so I'm +1 for having this feature.


It doesn't make sense to me as a base feature, though.

Maybe as a portgroup? You can (pretty) easily add it to any portfile you care about, and it's obvious that you are doing something wonky/unsupported.

The vast majority of people using MacPorts don't care about debugging symbols (and aren't going to experience any benefit from them) - adding an automatic variant that may or may not work to every port seems like overkill.

--
Daniel J. Luke                                                                   
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