Stripping debugging information

Programs compiled with HP Fortran 90 include minimal debugging information in the executable program. This information consists of a symbol table—a list of all the symbols in your program and their offset addresses. The symbol table provides the information needed to produce a procedure traceback. It is also used by the debugger and by the CXperf performance analysis tool.

However, the symbol table is not the same as the debugging information that is added to your program when you compile with the -g option. The symbol table is added to an executable even if the program is not compiled with the -g option. (For information about the -g option, see “Using the HP DDE debugger”).

If the size of executable is critical to your application, you can use the +strip option to remove symbol table information from the production version of your program. If you compile and link on separate command lines, you must use the +strip option on both command lines. Instead of recompiling with +strip, you can use the strip utility, which removes all debugging information, including the symbol table.

If the size of your executable is not important, you may want to retain the symbol table in the production version of your program. This table can be used by the debugger to provide minimal debugging. If a program has not been compiled with -g and does not include a symbol table, it is unusable by the debugger. Also, without the information provided by the symbol table, a procedure traceback displays virtual addresses only.

The amount of code that the symbol table information that adds to an executable is considerably less than the amount that compiling with -g adds. For descriptions of the -g and +strip options, refer to the HP Fortran 90 Programmer's Reference. For information about the strip utility, refer to the strip(1) man page.