Ubuntu mainline kernel builds debug situation

[Esokrates]

On Tuesday 22 April 2014 07:58:19 Tim Gardner wrote:
> I believe it is an issue of space v.s. utilization. Mainline kernels are
> primarily used for coarse bisecting. There are not many casual users
> that know how to use the debug symbols. The debug debs are also quite
> large, on the order of 500MB per kernel.

How about only providing debug symbols to the latest kernel? 500 megabyte more 
in total are not that much to afford for canonical I guess. 
This would be a very rational decision, because if you have to debug an issue 
you should try the latest code anyway and if you want to stay with an older 
mainline build you had the opportunity to download the debug symbol anyway.

So how do you think about the following: build scripts builds debug package 
along with the latest kernel and deletes the old debug symbol ...

That way the situation would be much better without loosing any new space.

Would that be an option?

BTW: A user does not have to be a kernel hacker to use the debug symbols. We 
have the linux-crashdump package that is pretty straight forward to configure 
and will create a memory dump in case of a kernel panic. A user can then 
simply run crash and type in bt to get the backtrace. That one he can send to 
developers then, or to some support team. (I know in theory the user would not 
have to run crash anyway, he could also simply submit the dump along with the 
kernel version, but that is a.) not necessary reliable and b.) nobody will 
take a look anyway at these dumps, except you pay someone to do so, so unless 
the user does it himself, nobody will do it)

Thanks for the reply,

Greetings,

Esokrates