lack of symbol tables in sgi distributions

[Bean Anderson]

In article <1990Sep17.075217.18381 at utstat.uucp>, geoff at utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) writes:
|> I note with displeasure that SGI ships binaries stripped of symbol
|> tables, presumably to save scarce and expensive bytes on disk (:-), and
|> not merely to make miserable the lives of users who lack source.  
|> Given the ever-dropping prices of disks and the utility of symbol tables
|> (e.g. for giving stack traces of misbehaving programs to the hotline,
|> or for patching global variables), is there any reason for SGI to
|> continue shipping stripped binaries?  I realise that COFF symbol tables
|> can get large, but even minimal symbol tables (i.e. not enough for
|> source-language debugging) would help.
|> -- 
|> Geoff Collyer		utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff at utstat.toronto.edu


1.  The minimal SGI system has a 170MB drive (there's a ton of them
in the field) and so our minimal software system must fit on that
drive.  Unstripped binaries would not fit.   In addition, we generally
don't want to force users to buy  disk space for stuff that they
may not use. 


2.  Tape space is, perhaps, even more important.  Unstripped binaries
would double the number of tapes required for a release.   At our
current size, that would add approximately $300,000 of cost per extra
tape to our distribution cost.  Our cost for the next release then
will be approximately $1,000,000 extra just to have unstripped binaries.

Those are two key reasons for stipping binaries.  New distribution 
media (such as CD-ROM) will/may solve the second issue and maybe 
even the first as we could ship both stripped and unstripped binaries.


Lastly, I totaly agree that some minimal symbol table information
should be available.  We are looking at that issue now. 

			Bean