Re: Hi, Glade problem (another question)

[Ralf Corsepius <corsepiu faw uni-ulm de>]

Martin Craig wrote:
> > CFLAGS="whatever you want" <path>/configure [options]
> >
> > Ralf
>
> A bit OT, but could anyone explain to me why the -g option is enabled
> by default in configure scripts. 
The autoconf default is -g -O2.

This is a compromise between the demands wrt. optimization and the
ability to be able to debug.

> I didn't notice until recently, I was
> left wondering why things I compiled from source had such large filesizes
> and ran so slowly.
-g -O2 compiled binaries normally are not significantly slower than
-O2 compiled binaries (unless your machine starts swapping due to
the additional overhead in size). 

If you want to reduce the sizes, you can also strip the -g -O2
compiled binaries, which is almost equivalent to compiling libraries
with -O2 only (cf. man strip).

BTW: Standard automake configurations also support "make
install-strip", which will strip binaries during installation.

> It seems crazy when no user is going to want it,
You will want it if chasing bugs (eg. analysing core dumps,
debugging).

Admitted, "Joe Average _User_" and "Joe Casual Installer" will
rarely need it, but even then it is occasionally useful, because it
enables support/hotline people to tell users to submit stack traces.

> and
> even when developing I've not yet needed to wheel out the debugger.
Then there still might be things to discover for you :)

Ralf