Re: About static libraries and Debian policy

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes:
> On Fri, 14 May 2010 07:57:49 -0700 (PDT), sjw wrote:
>
>> On May 14, 2:16 pm, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
>> wrote:
>>> http://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html
>>>
>>> requires no static libraries.

Yes, it does:

§ 5.3.3 Ada object files [...]
Rule: The -dev package SHALL provide a static library in
/usr/lib/libLIBRARY.a.

>>> Is that consistent with GNAT symbolic
>>> traceback, which for some unclear reasons is not included into GNAT
>>> relocatable RTL.

The debugging symbols are in additional packages with names ending in
-dbg.  Re-read § 5.6 The separate debugging information package and §
6.1 Debugging programs that use shared libraries.

>>> BTW, Why there should be no traceback when relocatable libraries are
>>> used?

Traceback is always available, either in symbolic or numeric form.  To
get the symbolic form, you need the -dbg package installed.

>> The problem is, I think, that the GNAT RTL (libgnat, libgnarl) isn't
>> compiled with debug (-g), so there are no symbols available to
>> interpret the traceback.

Yes, libgnat is compiled with -g but the debugging information is
detached into the -dbg packages.

> Maybe, but other shared libraries can well be compiled with -g as well
> as the application. But linking them with shared RTL fails if any of
> them uses Traceback.Symbolic.

That's because GNAT GPL includes a non-standard 'libaddr2line.a'
produced from binutils (and therefore pure GPL) and calls that to
produce the symbolic tracebacks.  GCC (from the FSF) lacks this library.
I patched GCC to use an alternate mechanism instead, i.e. fork()/exec()
and call /usr/bin/addr2line.  This restores the functionality in the FSF
version of GNAT.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.