forums.ps2dev.org

[Saotome]

could anyone tell my how to get rid of the debug-info in a compiled elf-file? - i mean the function-names/labels/symbols or whatever they are called - what you see, when you dissassemble it. what compiler flag to set or to remove?

thanks
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infj

[mrbrown]

ee-strip -o final-stripped.elf final.elf

If you don't need the symbols at all in the original ELF, you can omit the -o parameter.
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"He was warned..."

[pixel]

You can also use the -s option on gcc's command line to strip those at link time.
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pixel: A mischievous magical spirit associated with screen displays. The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology. Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence and the trolls in the marketing department.

[Saotome]

thanks very much, both of you
already thought that the final-elf will be smaller, but didnt expect that much: 120kB -> 46kB :)
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infj

[tjd]

-s in a link strips all the symbols, not just the debug info. This may be what you want, but renders an "nm" quite useless and makes debugging harder. You might also ensure that you don't use -g. Failing that, if you run a "size -Ax" and see all those tasty "debug_*" sections, then you can always provide your own linker script and add a " * ( debug_* )" to the DISCARD pile.

Personally, for both the EE & IOP I always use -g (with -O0 or -O2 so as to not confuse gdb & me too much). I have two targets: one with a -s to produce the smallest executable possible which gets fed to the iron and the other leaving everything alone that I feed to gdb in order to debug. YMMV.

tjd

[J.F.]

Use -S to strip just the debug symbols. Lower case = all symbols, upper case = just debug symbols.

[tjd]

strip -s -S

yeah, but it doesn't work with gcc-3.2.2 (loads of error messages and the resulting file is trash), but -s does work with gcc/g++/ld... Go figure.

[J.F.]

Stripping is a linker function. If you are trying to strip from the gcc line, you have to use "-Wl,-s" or "-Wl,-S". This tells gcc to pass the -s or -S to the linker.

So your line in the makefile might be something like this:
gcc $@.o -o $@ -Wl,-s $(LIBS)

[mrbrown]

Stripping is not just a linker function. The linker is never invoked when you do "gcc -s -c myfile.c -o foo.o". Technically, "gcc -s" and "gcc -Wl,-s" are too different things, but I'll let the GCC and binutils manuals sort that out for you :P.
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"He was warned..."

[tjd]

yes gcc -s and gcc -Wl,-s are "supposed" to be different. Indeed, when you wsant to look at the assembler code, gcc -s foo.c is a good thing.

But (isn't there always one?). 'Splain this:

[Drakonite]

[blackdroid]

[quote="tjd"]yes gcc -s and gcc -Wl,-s are "supposed" to be different. Indeed, when you wsant to look at the assembler code, gcc -s foo.c is a good thing.
[/code]

I suppose you meant

-S Stop after the stage of compilation proper; do not assemble. The output is
an assembler code file for each non-assembler input file specified.
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Kung VU

[tjd]

yes, -S is what my fingers should have typed... It's been a long night. But we all digress. My point a while back is that an IRX produced from "gcc -s ..." and "strip ..." do not appear to create the same file. The results of the "strip" are garbage. (all this from gcc-3.2.2 and binutils 2.14)

[pixel]

Anyway, if you REALLY want very strict stripping code, then, look at ps2-packer and sjuncrunch code. The idea would be to load all the PT_LOAD sections (just what ps2-packer does), and write a new ELF with only program header sections (just what sjuncrunch does). You can also change the writer part by shorting up the header size. The default 0x1000 bytes is a bit too much, and it can be reduced to something much smaller.
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pixel: A mischievous magical spirit associated with screen displays. The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology. Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence and the trolls in the marketing department.

[tjd]

Well, thanks. But objcopy to a raw file and zip/unzip works nicely too ;-)