The Debian distribution has introduced a new service, debuginfod, which allows debugging programs included in the distribution without the need to separately install the associated debug information packages from the debuginfo repository. The launched service enables the use of the new functionality in GDB 10 for dynamically loading debug symbols from an external server directly during debugging.
The process supporting the service, debuginfod, is an HTTP server for serving ELF/DWARF debug information and source code. When built with debuginfod support, GDB can automatically connect to debuginfod servers to fetch missing debug information about the files being processed or to separate debug files and source code for the executable being debugged.
In Debian, support for debuginfod is currently included in the elfutils and GDB packages available in the unstable and testing repositories. To enable it, server it is sufficient to set the environment variable ‘DEBUGINFOD_URLS="https://debuginfod.debian.net" before running GDB. The debug information on the Debian-initiated server debuginfod is available for packages from the unstable, testing, testing-proposed-updates, stable, stable-backports, and proposed-updates repositories.
Source: opennet.ru
