On Sunday, January 19 2025, Adrian Bunk wrote: > debian/NEWS > > ... > gdb-minimal contained a stripped-down version of GDB in order to be > installed on systems where there was no need for a fully fledged > debugger. One of its main benefits was supposed to be its smaller size. > In the end, the storage space saved by gdb-minimal was only 1 megabyte, > while it increased the maintenance burden (and package build time). For > that reason, the package was dropped and the regular gdb package now > replaces it. > ... > > > In 15.2-1 the storage space saved by gdb-minimal compared to gdb > was more like 2 MB plus some libraries, you have a valid point that > this did not save much space. > > But your logic is missing that you are also removing the non-multiarch > gdb used as comparison, going from gdb-minimal to the new gdb package > adds around 30 MB storage space usage. > > Please re-add gdb-minimal, to continue providing a small version of gdb > on systems with limited space.
Thanks for the email. You're right that I did not fully consider the fact that I would not only be dropping gdb-minimal but also gdb-multiarch, and that this leads to a significant increase in the final package size. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. While I understand that rationale, I still think we should not have these multiple variants of the package just to save some megabytes of space and/or to enable/disable features. The reason why you're asking for gdb-minimal to be brought back is because sometime in the past someone thought it made sense to have this split, but things change... Does it really make sense to save some megabytes when the debug information for programs we're debugging is often times larger than the gdb package itself? AFAIK Debian is the only distro that offers these GDB variants (Fedora also has a gdb-minimal package, but that serves another purpose and is not meant to be used; I know because I created it). I guess I'd be willing to accommodate this request, but instead of bringing gdb-minimal back, I believe gdb-multiarch should be resurrected instead (again, if we really get to this point). The former seems to be more "used" than the latter, so I'd prefer to keep the merge of gdb-minimal with gdb. Thanks, -- Sergio GPG key ID: 237A 54B1 0287 28BF 00EF 31F4 D0EB 7628 65FC 5E36 Please send encrypted e-mail if possible https://sergiodj.net/
