DebuggingPorts [FreeBSD WIKI]

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====== Debugging Ports ======

===== Enabling Debugging During Build =====

Whether ports are built with debugging symbols can be controlled by the settings in /etc/make.conf.

Enable debugging for all ports:

<code>
WITH_DEBUG=	yes
</code>

Enable debugging for select ports:

<code>
WITH_DEBUG_PORTS=	mail/dovecot security/krb5
</code>

If debugging is enabled for a specific port, the ports system will:
  * Add DEBUG_FLAGS (defaults to -g) to CFLAGS
  * Tries to prevent the binaries from being stripped (including checking the install target to replace "install-strip" with "install")

To customize the changes to CFLAGS in debugging mode:

<code>
DEBUG_FLAGS=	-g -O0
</code>

This will instruct the compiler to:
  * -g: Generate debug information
  * -O0: Disable compiler optimizations

===== Checking Debugging Symbols =====

After a port has been built with the above debugging steps, you can check they have worked by using file(1) to analyze the installed binaries.

<code>
$ file /usr/local/sbin/dovecot
/usr/local/sbin/dovecot: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (FreeBSD), dynamically linked, interpreter /libexec/ld-elf.so.1, for FreeBSD 12.0 (1200054), FreeBSD-style, with debug_info, not stripped
</code>

Note that this file has debug_info and is not stripped.