Hi, first of all, my apologizes to post in this place, but i can't post on (book) section, it's forbidden for me, so... I'm posting this issue to see what you guys think about :) I bought “Software exorcism – a handbook for debugging and optimizing legacy code” and a think I didn’t get this part: On page 207 the author states: "Some business software companies prefer to strip debug information and accept the associated performance hit, because it allows sales engineers to perform an on-site diagnosis. When sales engineers make a house call, all that they need to do in order to take a look under the hood is insert the debug information and crank up a debugger." That's sounds a little bit strange for me, because I can't see how removing debug information will hit performance down! Or if I get it wrong (performance will be improved) what's the problem?!?!! Performance gain is not a good thing? You know? :) PS: BAF(on allegro.cc) suggest-me that this statement is supposed to be written (not to strip debug...) I think that's right. Thanks, Marcos Emmanuel.

That's probably a typo.

This site is weird about what it says you're allowed and not allowed to do. Are you sure you were logged in when you tried posting in the books section?

Ahhhh... It's still weird in other ways, though. It never can decide if I'm allowed to post a reply if I'm not logged in. Once it almost let me edit someone else's post.

Figured it was a communication issue. But why does it only sometimes say that I can post replies when I'm not logged on? Sometimes the whole list at the bottom of the page is "may not x", while sometimes the "reply to thread" one is "you may post replies"? I hope I'm not hijacking this thread too badly, but that has always bugged me.

How I interpret what the book is saying is that they ship a debug build; taking the performance hit; but they strip the debug info.

So, all the on-site guy has to do is plug the debug info into the debug build and debug it.

Hummm... Deyja, i don't think so, this sounds a bit odd, because he (the author) don't say anything about it, look this is the "FULL" section:

One simple way to make debugging more expensive is to remove debugging information from your deliverable. This can be done by stripping debug information (with a tool like GNU's strip utility) or by setting your development tools to generate a release build.
Some business software companies prefer to strip debug information and accept the associated performance hit, because it allows sales engineers to perform an on-site diagnosis. When sales engineers make a house call, all that they need to do in order to take a look under the hood is insert the debug information and crank up a debugger.

...

So they leave sort-of leave a placeholder for the debug info?

Quote:One simple way to make debugging more expensive is...

What does that mean? Why is that a good thing???