Subject: Re: [PATCH] Makefile: do not compile git with debugging symbols by default

From: Matthieu Moy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 18:36:41 +0100

Alexander Kuleshov <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hello Jeff,
>
> Yes, main point is size of executable.

The Git executable is a few megabytes, i.e. 0.001% the size of a really
small hard disk. The benefit seems really negligible to me.

OTOH, debug information allow users to do better bug reports in case of
crash (gdb, valgrind), which outweights by far the benefit of saving a
handfull of megabytes IMHO.

On a side note, I find it very frustrating when a program I use
crashes, opens a bug report wizard, and end up telling me "sorry, your
distro removed the debug symbols, recompile everything if you want to
report a bug".

I understand that for a few users, the size of executable matters. But
this category of users should be able to find the "strip" target or
something equivalent.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/