[fpc-devel] Image size is too big for target even if external debug file is used

[Sergei Gorelkin]

05.02.2013 19:32, Sven Barth пишет:
> Hello together!
>
> I have a arm-wince project (using LCL) where I have a stacktrace and I'd like to resolve the symbol
> information. As I'm not cross debugging I'm using an offline (post mortem) process for which I
> compile my application with debug information, but also -Xg to get a seperate symbol file which I
> can use with GDB. Now the problem is that since the last time I needed these symbols my application
> seems to have gotten big enough that the debug information triggers the "Executable image size too
> big for arm-wince target" error.
>
> I'm currently using 2.6.0 on i386-win32. If compiled for i386-win32 the application's size is 3.7 MB
> while the debug information size is 42 MB (the application size for arm-wince is 4.3 MB).
>
> I've looked a bit inside the compiler and shouldn't it be possible and worthwhile to not raise this
> error if one is cross compiling and currently the debug file is generated (the corresponding
> location is - in trunk - ogbase.TExeOutput.SetCurMemPos)? Or maybe define a list of targets where it
> should be allowed when cross compiling.
>

An interesting issue. On ELF targets all debug sections are placed at zero address, so such error 
can arise only if size of a single section exceeds limit, but on COFF targets like arm-wince debug 
sections consume address space (although they are not loaded).
Maybe we should simply ignore the address limit for debug sections, or maybe only when generating 
external debug file.

Regards,
Sergei