(lack of symbol tables in) sgi distributions

[David M. Laur]

Bean Anderson, SGI (WPD), writes:
>2.  Tape space is, perhaps, even more important.  Unstripped binaries
>would double the number of tapes required for a release.   At our
>current size, that would add approximately $300,000 of cost per extra
>tape to our distribution cost.  Our cost for the next release then
>will be approximately $1,000,000 extra just to have unstripped binaries.
>
>Those are two key reasons for stipping binaries.  New distribution 
>media (such as CD-ROM) will/may solve the second issue and maybe 
>even the first as we could ship both stripped and unstripped binaries.

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Would user savings in maintenance costs pay for the CD-ROM reader?
Would SGI save enough to just send one along?
Do options such as Fortran or NFS add as much per tape per distribution?

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>Lastly, I totaly agree that some minimal symbol table information
>should be available.  We are looking at that issue now. 
>
>			Bean

Would symbol tables for the GL,etc really be useful? Our experience
has been that programs which crash "inside" a system routine usually
are calling the system routine with bad args, which lint or the new
"-prototypes" option to cc will find; or they've walked off the end
of an array somewhere, rendering the symbol table useless anyway.
For sites that really need the symbol table, maybe a seperate option
should be sold, allowing them to alternately link with a special
version of the libraries (-lgl_Sym ?).

- David

David Laur
Interactive Computer Graphics Lab
Princeton University
dmlaur at manray.princeton.edu
609-258-4609