I know I can generate debug symbol using -g option. However the symbol is embeded in the target file. Could gcc generate debug symbol outside the result executable/library? Like .pdb file of windows VC++ compiler did.
You need to use objcopy to separate the debug information:
objcopy --only-keep-debug "${tostripfile}" "${debugdir}/${debugfile}"
strip --strip-debug --strip-unneeded "${tostripfile}"
objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink="${debugdir}/${debugfile}" "${tostripfile}"
I use the bash script below to separate the debug information into files with a .debug extension in a .debug directory. This way I can tar the libraries and executables in one tar file and the .debug directories in another. If I want to add the debug info later on I simply extract the debug tar file and voila I have symbolic debug information.
This is the bash script:
#!/bin/bash
scriptdir=`dirname ${0}`
scriptdir=`(cd ${scriptdir}; pwd)`
scriptname=`basename ${0}`
set -e
function errorexit()
{
errorcode=${1}
shift
echo $@
exit ${errorcode}
}
function usage()
{
echo "USAGE ${scriptname} <tostrip>"
}
tostripdir=`dirname "$1"`
tostripfile=`basename "$1"`
if [ -z ${tostripfile} ] ; then
usage
errorexit 0 "tostrip must be specified"
fi
cd "${tostripdir}"
debugdir=.debug
debugfile="${tostripfile}.debug"
if [ ! -d "${debugdir}" ] ; then
echo "creating dir ${tostripdir}/${debugdir}"
mkdir -p "${debugdir}"
fi
echo "stripping ${tostripfile}, putting debug info into ${debugfile}"
objcopy --only-keep-debug "${tostripfile}" "${debugdir}/${debugfile}"
strip --strip-debug --strip-unneeded "${tostripfile}"
objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink="${debugdir}/${debugfile}" "${tostripfile}"
chmod -x "${debugdir}/${debugfile}"