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How can I tell if a library was compiled with -g?

Answer 1

+7 A:

You can use objdump for this.

EDIT: From the man-page:

-W
--dwarf
Displays  the  contents of the DWARF debug sections in the file, if
any are present.

swegi 2010-01-04 13:55:47

Answer 2

+5 A:

nm -a <lib> will print all symbols from library, including debug ones.

So you can compare the outputs of nm <lib> and nm -a <lib> - if they differ, your lib contains some debug symbols.

qrdl 2010-01-04 13:56:24

nm is certainly the wrong tool for this question on Linux.

Employed Russian 2010-01-05 04:16:56

@Employed Russian Can you please elaborate on this? Why do you think it is a wrong tool? It does the job, and does it on Linux as well.

qrdl 2010-01-05 08:27:22

Answer 3

+3 A:

If you're running on Linux, use 'objdump --debugging'. There should be an entry for each object file in the library. For object files without debugging symbols, you'll see something like:

objdump --debugging libvoidincr.a
In archive libvoidincr.a:

voidincr.o:     file format elf64-x86-64

If there are debugging symbols, the output will be much more verbose.

Matt McClellan 2010-01-04 14:02:08

There are also `obdjump -W lib` and `readelf -w lib`. The latter one is more configurable - see readelf(1) manpage.

przemoc 2010-01-04 14:16:59

For any binary, (including those compiled with -g) objdump gives me the response of "no recognized debugging information" unless I compile it with -gstabs. This appears to be a recognized bug.

Dan Hook 2010-01-04 14:24:20

Dan, on which platform did you try this?

swegi 2010-01-04 14:38:53

Ubuntu 8.04 on x86

Dan Hook 2010-01-04 15:51:58

Employed Russian: from man objdump(1), the --debugging flag "attempts to parse STABS and IEEE debugging format information stored in the file and print it out using a C like syntax. If neither of these formats are found this option falls back on the -W option to print any DWARF information in the file."

Matt McClellan 2010-01-05 17:13:21

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How can I tell if a library was compiled with -g?

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