18.7. Debugging

Use the -g option to have GCC include symbol and source-line information in its object and executable output files. This information is used by debugging programs to display the contents of variables in registers and memory while stepping through the program. (For more on debugging, see Chapter 20.) There are a number of formats for this symbol information, and by default GCC uses your system's native format.

You can also use a suffix to the -g option to store the symbol information in a different format from your system's native format. You might want to do this in order to conform to the specific debugging program that you are using. For example, the option -ggdb chooses the best format available on your system for debugging with the GNU debugger, GDB.

Because the symbol information can increase and even multiply the size of your executable file, you will probably want to recompile without the -g option and link using the -s option when you have completed debugging and testing. However, some software packages are distributed with debugging information in the binaries for use in diagnosing subsequent users' problems.