Keeping debug info, but smaller?

help
#1

Debug information that Rust generates is huge. In my case, in release mode, it's 480MB of debug info for a 22MB stripped executable.

I would like to keep some minimal debug info to get line numbers in backtraces, but 480MB for this seems excessive.

  • Is it normal that the debug info is so large?
  • Can I do something to generate only minimal debug information (line numbers only)?
#2

Seems like you want -C debuginfo=1:

https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/rustc/codegen-options/index.html#debuginfo

#3

What setting are you currently using for the debug key in your release profile? You can set it to 1 which is in between the default dev setting and the default release setting. Or you can use 0 (default for the release profile) which I think still emits enough info for stack traces.

[profile.release]
debug = 1

That said, I'm not sure why your debuginfo is so large. I just tested one of my (much smaller) projects, on MacOS, and it is:

  • 2.0 MB stripped
  • 2.4 MB with debug = 0
  • 2.7 MB with debug = 1
  • 2.7 MB with debug = 2
#4

debug=1 took it down from 480MB to 105MB, thanks!