[gcc] How to generate gcc debug symbol outside the build target?

NOTE: Programs compiled with high-optimization levels (-O3, -O4) cannot generate many debugging symbols for optimized variables, in-lined functions and unrolled loops, regardless of the symbols being embedded (-g) or extracted (objcopy) into a '.debug' file.

Alternate approaches are

  1. Embed the versioning (VCS, git, svn) data into the program, for compiler optimized executables (-O3, -O4).
  2. Build a 2nd non-optimized version of the executable.

The first option provides a means to rebuild the production code with full debugging and symbols at a later date. Being able to re-build the original production code with no optimizations is a tremendous help for debugging. (NOTE: This assumes testing was done with the optimized version of the program).

Your build system can create a .c file loaded with the compile date, commit, and other VCS details. Here is a 'make + git' example:

program: program.o version.o 

program.o: program.cpp program.h 

build_version.o: build_version.c    

build_version.c: 
    @echo "const char *build1=\"VCS: Commit: $(shell git log -1 --pretty=%H)\";" > "$@"
    @echo "const char *build2=\"VCS: Date: $(shell git log -1 --pretty=%cd)\";" >> "$@"
    @echo "const char *build3=\"VCS: Author: $(shell git log -1 --pretty="%an %ae")\";" >> "$@"
    @echo "const char *build4=\"VCS: Branch: $(shell git symbolic-ref HEAD)\";" >> "$@"
    # TODO: Add compiler options and other build details

.TEMPORARY: build_version.c

After the program is compiled you can locate the original 'commit' for your code by using the command: strings -a my_program | grep VCS

VCS: PROGRAM_NAME=my_program
VCS: Commit=190aa9cace3b12e2b58b692f068d4f5cf22b0145
VCS: BRANCH=refs/heads/PRJ123_feature_desc
VCS: AUTHOR=Joe Developer  [email protected]
VCS: COMMIT_DATE=2013-12-19

All that is left is to check-out the original code, re-compile without optimizations, and start debugging.