[vlc-devel] [PATCH 3/5] contrib: add an option to generate PDB files

[Martin Storsjö]

On Thu, 16 May 2019, Steve Lhomme wrote:

> On 2019-05-16 10:16, Martin Storsjö wrote:
>> On Thu, 16 May 2019, Steve Lhomme wrote:
>> 
>>> Only supported by contribs using libtool
>>>
>>> Only output for programs and shared libraries (EXE and DLL), in .a 
>>> archives the
>>> symbols are in the the each .o files. They are aggregated when a .dll 
>>> or .exe
>>> is generated with them.
>> 
>> As contribs for windows mainly build static archives (the built target 
>> executables aren't really used, and normally no DLLs are built), is 
>> there any actual need to patch libtool at all, and try to generate PDB 
>> files for these libs? For building just static libraries that contribute 
>> the right kind of debug info, wouldn't just the -gcodeview flag be enough?
>
> Technically yes, static libraries don't have a PDB. But there are a few 
> .exe that we build. It may be useful to debug them if needed. IMO it 
> doesn't do any harm and can be useful.

Well, no, it doesn't do any harm, no. It's just the extra weight of the 
libtool patch in 1/5 plus most lines in this patch.

If the explicit intent is to have debuggable exes for the contrib builds, 
then I guess that's fine. I'd appreciate if that aspect is made clear, 
that the whole libtool patch isn't necessary for anything else than that.

// Martin