83 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
83 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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date: 2022-08-14T00:00:00-05:00
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title: "Debuginfod is coming to Ubuntu"
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tags: [en_us, debian, ubuntu, free-software, debuginfod, gdb]
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---
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These past couple of months I have been working to bring
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[debuginfod](https://sourceware.org/elfutils/Debuginfod.html) to
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Ubuntu. I thought it would be a good idea to make this post and
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explain a little bit about what the service is and how I'm planning to
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deploy it.
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A quick recap: what's debuginfod?
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---------------------------------
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Here's a good summary of what `debuginfod` is:
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debuginfod is a new-ish project whose purpose is to serve
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ELF/DWARF/source-code information over HTTP. It is developed under the
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elfutils umbrella. You can find more information about it here:
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https://sourceware.org/elfutils/Debuginfod.html
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In a nutshell, by using a debuginfod service you will not need to
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install debuginfo (a.k.a. dbgsym) files anymore; the symbols will be
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served to GDB (or any other debuginfo consumer that supports debuginfod)
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over the network. Ultimately, this makes the debugging experience much
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smoother (I myself never remember the full URL of our debuginfo
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repository when I need it).
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If you follow the Debian project, you might know that I run their
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[debuginfod service](https://debuginfod.debian.org). In fact, the
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excerpt above was taken from the
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[announcement](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2021/02/msg00003.html)
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I made last year, letting the Debian community know that the service
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was available.
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First stage
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-----------
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With more and more GNU/Linux distributions offering a `debuginfod`
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service to their users, I strongly believe that Ubuntu cannot afford
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to stay out of this "party" anymore. Fortunately, I have a
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[manager](https://launchpad.net/~paelzer) who not only agrees with me
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but also turned the right knobs in order to make this project one of
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my priorities for this development cycle.
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The deployment of this service will be made in stages. The first one,
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whose results are due to be announced in the upcoming weeks,
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encompasses indexing and serving all of the available debug symbols
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from the [official Ubuntu repository](http://ddebs.ubuntu.com). In
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other words, the service will serve everything from `main`, `universe`
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and `multiverse`, from every supported Ubuntu release out there.
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This initial (a.k.a. "alpha") stage will also allow us to have an
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estimate of how much the service is used, so that we can better
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determine the resources allocated to it.
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More down the road
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------------------
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This is just the beginning. In the following cycles, I will be
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working on a few interesting projects to expand the scope of the
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service and make it even more useful for the broader Ubuntu community.
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To give you an idea, here is what is on my plate:
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- Working on the problem of indexing and serving **source code** as
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well. This is an interesting problem and I already have some ideas,
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but it's also challenging and may unfold into more sub-projects.
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The good news is that a solution for this problem will also be
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beneficial to Debian.
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- Working with the snap developers to come up with a way to index and
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serve debug symbols for snaps as well.
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- Improve the integration of the service into Ubuntu. In fact, I have
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already started working on this by making `elfutils` (actually,
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`libdebuginfod`) install a customized shell snippet to automatically
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setup access to Ubuntu's `debuginfod` instance.
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As you can see, there's a lot to do. I am happy to be working on this
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project, and I hope it will be helpful and useful for the Ubuntu
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community.
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