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cdebugginggdbdebug-symbols

How can I tell if a library was compiled with -g?

I have some compiled libraries on x86 Linux and I want to quickly determine whether they were compiled with debugging symbols.

Solution

  • If you're running on Linux, use objdump --debugging. There should be an entry for each object file in the library. For object files without debugging symbols, you'll see something like:

    objdump --debugging libvoidincr.a
In archive libvoidincr.a:

voidincr.o:     file format elf64-x86-64

    If there are debugging symbols, the output will be much more verbose.