HP UX Software Transition Kit (STK) manual Emitting debug information in a separate file

The linker command line gets lengthy and difficult to read if several such options are specified. In fact, you exceed the maximum HP-UX command line length if you specify too many options. To get around this, use ld linker option files, described under “Passing Linker Options in a file with -c” (page 44) . You can specify any number of -hor +e options in this file.

You can use -hor +e options when building a shared library (with -b), combining .o files ( with -r), and when linking to create an a.out file.

Emitting debug information in a separate file

Valid for executable and shared library links with +noobjdebug option. Instructs the linker to dump all debug information in a separate file specified in filename and not include them in the executable. The HP debugger (WDB 6.2 and later) supports the separate debug information file during debugging. This option is useful to create an executable without debug information and retain the debug information for later use. It also helps to reduce the size of the executable.

Use the +dbgfile option to create a separate debug information file. This option takes a filename as an argument.

The following example shows the result of creating a separate debug information file using the +dbgfile option.

Example 1 Create a separate debug information file using +dbgfile option

$cc -g example.c -Wl,+dbgfile,a.out.dbg -o a.out $elfdump -S -h a.out.dbg grep '\.debug'

31PBIT 00000000 0000051a 000003fb .debug_macinfo

32PBIT 00000000 00000915 000000c7 .debug_abbrev

33PBIT 00000000 000009dc 00000405 .debug_info

34PBIT 00000000 00000de1 000000df .debug_line

35PBIT 00000000 00000ec0 00000032 .debug_actual

36PBIT 00000000 00000ef2 00000030 .debug_procs_abbrev

37PBIT 00000000 00000f22 0000005b .debug_procs_info

In this example, the name of the separate debug information file is a.out.dbg and it is provided as the argument to the linker option +dbgfile. This creates a file by name a.out.dbg which contains all the debug information.

Linker gives out information about the debug file in the executable, and the debugger automatically picks up the debug information file. As seen through the elfdump output, all the .debug_ sections are in a.out.dbg file.

This feature is available only on Integrity systems.

Exporting Symbols with +ee

Like the +e option, the +ee option allows you to export symbols. However, this option, the option does not alter the visibility of other symbols in the file. It exports the specified symbol, and does not hide any of the symbols exported by default.

Exporting Symbols from main with -E

In PA-32 mode, the linker exports from a program only those symbols that were imported by a shared library. For example, if a shared executable's libraries do not reference the program's main routine, the linker does not include the main symbol in the a.out file's export list. Normally, this is a problem only when a program calls shared library management routines (described in “Shared Library Management Routines” (page 136)). To make the linker export all symbols from a program, invokeld with the -Eoption.

In IPF/PA-64 mode, the behavior is specified by -Eis the default behavior. The +e option allows you to be more selective about which symbols are exported, resulting in better performance. For more information on +e, see “Exporting Symbols with +e” (page 37).

38 Determining How to Link Programs or Libraries (Linker Tasks)