Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

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Thoran
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Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by Thoran »

Hi all,

I wonder why noone actually noticed this yet and maybe there is a good reason for it, but I noticed that all Ogre SDKs miss the PDB files for debugging into the binaries.
This is really painful when you intend to work with the SDK and develop an Ogre application and you have a problem and no way to debug it intensively. I know that I can always build Ogre
myself and then get the PDB symbol files, but why then provide SDKs, if I have to do all on my own anyways?

Thoran
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Re: Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by Thoran »

To bring this topic up again; Has anyone of the active project maintainers any opinion on this issue?
I really would do this myself and buildiung my own SDK, if the SDK building scripts wouldn't be so error prone.
Using the INSTALL project from inside VS which works quite well, however I can either get a Debug SDK or a Release SDK, so the only way out of this are the *.bat scripts,
which as I mentioned above don't seem to be very stable and easily killed in the process. (Don't have the errors here atm, so I can't tell what the problem was, as it has been a while since I last used it).

Thanks,
Thoran
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Re: Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by bstone »

You better figure out a way to build the source code if you want source-level debugging. It's not so hard after all. PDB files store paths to the original source files and using those can be problematic if you don't have the source files at the exact same location as stored in the PDB. And sometimes you can't physically have them at the same location due to different hard drive partitioning for e.g. The size of the SDK is also a factor here I think.
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Re: Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by CABAListic »

Sinbad decided to leave out pdbs from the SDK due to the massive increase in size. Given that the SDKs are mostly meant for people who'd just like to try out Ogre and that we expect anyone seriously using it to build it from source eventually, it seemed a good compromise.
Using the INSTALL project from inside VS which works quite well, however I can either get a Debug SDK or a Release SDK, so the only way out of this are the *.bat scripts,
You have to run INSTALL once for Debug and Release, then you get both. What's the issue?
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Re: Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by Thoran »

I my honest opinion, I had the idea of Ogre not being a compilation training task, but a graphics engine, that is intended to be used. So why not make it easy for users to get started with it?
The argument of a big SDK might have been valid a few years ago, but I think this is not an obstacle anymore. Beside that an SDK with debug symbols could be a separate download.
Don't get me wrong I am quite capable of compiling Ogre myself and I will do that if necessary, but I am doing my game development as a hobby, so time is limited. And any time saving by
whatever means it will be is greatly appreciated.

Thoran
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Re: Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by jacmoe »

20 minutes is too long?
I bet compiling Ogre on your machine takes even less time.
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Re: Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by CABAListic »

While size may no longer matter that much as far as hard drive space is concerned, it does matter when uploading the SDK to Sourceforge. Due to the asymmetric nature of today's broadband internet connection, uploading already takes quite a bit of time, and I have had it happen repeatedly that the upload failed and I had to start over again. I don't know how much bigger the compressed archive would be with the PDBs included, but I'm not exactly looking forward to uploading double or triple the size of the current SDKs.

If Ogre were just a single configuration that everyone uses, that added effort might be worth it. But from my experience, at some point everyone needs to make some modification to the build, and then the SDK just doesn't cut it anymore.
For the 1.8 SDK I might take a look at how much difference it makes size-wise, but no promises.
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Re: Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by Thoran »

jacmoe wrote:20 minutes is too long?
I bet compiling Ogre on your machine takes even less time.
You dind't quite get my point. It was about making sure you have all the dependencies (even though I know you can downlaod the dependenices from the SDK page) and ensuring the whole environment is correct to get it run, even though this is a one time setup.

@Cabalistic:
Don't worry, I just wanted an opinion from you guys who do a lot of work to keep Ogre3D running as project and I think I got that one now. As I need a version with PDBs quite soon to debug on my engine, I will most likely try to build an own version based on 1.7.4 (maybe even 1.8) on the weekend. So I can take over that effort and let you know about the size.

Thoran
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Re: Symbolf files for debug binaries in SDK

Post by bstone »

Zipped the following files for the 1.7.4. release build with debug info:

ogremain.pdb
plugin_cgprogrammanager.pdb
plugin_octreescenemanager.pdb
rendersystem_direct3d9.pdb
rendersystem_gl.pdb

131M total, compressed down to 20M. That's just the release build so it would be at least 40M if debug build included and I guess those are not all DLLs shipped with the SDK.
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