Sun Studio 12: Debugging a Program With dbx

Using a Separate Debug File

dbx lets you use options in the objcopy command on Linux platforms and the gobjcopy command on Solaris platforms to copy the debugging information from an executable to a separate debug file, strip that information from the executable, and create a link between these two files.

dbx searches for the separate debug file in the following order and reads the debugging information from the first file it finds:

For example, to create a separate debug file for executable a.out, you would do the following.

ProcedureCreating a Separate Debug File

  1. Create a separate debug file named a.out.debug containing the debugging information.

  2. Strip the debugging information from a.out.

  3. Establish the link between the two files. On Solaris platforms, use the gobjcopy command. On Linux platforms, use the objcopy command.

    On a Linux platform, you can use the command objcopy -help to find out whether or not the -add-gnu-debuglink option is supported on the platform. You can replace the -only-keep-debug option of the objcopy command with the command cp a.out a.out.debug to make a.out.debug a fully executable file.