NAME

dh_strip - strip executables, shared libraries, and some static libraries

SYNOPSIS

dh_strip [debhelper options] [-Xitem] [--dbg-package=package] [--keep-debug]

DESCRIPTION

dh_strip is a debhelper program that is responsible for stripping executables, shared libraries, and static libraries that are not used for debugging.

This program examines your package build directories and works out what to strip on its own. It uses file(1) and file permissions and filenames to figure out what files are shared libraries (*.so), executable binaries, and static (lib*.a) and debugging libraries (lib*_g.a, debug/*.so), and strips each as much as is possible. (Which is not at all for debugging libraries.) In general it seems to make very good guesses, and will do the right thing in almost all cases.

Since it is very hard to automatically guess if a file is a module, and hard to determine how to strip a module, dh_strip does not currently deal with stripping binary modules such as .o files.

OPTIONS

-Xitem, --exclude=item

Exclude files that contain item anywhere in their filename from being stripped. You may use this option multiple times to build up a list of things to exclude.

--dbg-package=package

Causes dh_strip to save debug symbols stripped from the packages it acts on as independent files in the package build directory of the specified debugging package.

For example, if your packages are libfoo and foo and you want to include a foo-dbg package with debugging symbols, use dh_strip --dbg-package=foo-dbg.

Note that this option behaves significantly different in debhelper compatibility levels 4 and below. Instead of specifying the name of a debug package to put symbols in, it specifies a package (or packages) which should have separated debug symbols, and the separated symbols are placed in packages with -dbg added to their name.

This option implies --no-ddebs and cannot be used with --ddeb or --ddeb-migration.

-k, --keep-debug

Debug symbols will be retained, but split into an independent file in usr/lib/debug/ in the package build directory. --dbg-package is easier to use than this option, but this option is more flexible.

This option implies --no-ddebs and cannot be used with --ddebs.

--ddeb-migration=package-relation

This option is used to migrate from a manual "-dbg" package (created with --dbg-package) to the automatic "ddebs". The value of this option should describe a valid Replaces- and Breaks-relation, which will be added to the ddebs to avoid file conflicts with the (now obsolete) -dbg package.

This option implies --ddebs and cannot be used with --keep-debug, --dbg-package or --no-ddebs.

Examples:

  dh_strip --ddeb-migration='libfoo-dbg (<< 2.1-3~)'
  dh_strip --ddeb-migration='libfoo-tools-dbg (<< 2.1-3~), libfoo2-dbg (<< 2.1-3~)'
    

--ddebs, --no-ddebs

Control whether dh_strip should be creating ddebs when possible.

Once the Debian archive supports ddebs, debhelper will generate ddebs by default. Until then, this option does nothing except allow you to pre-emptively disable ddebs if you know the generated ddebs will not work for your package.

If you want to test the ddebs feature, you can set the environment variable DH_BUILD_DDEBS to 1. Keep in mind that the Debian archive does not accept them yet. This variable is only a temporary safe guard and will be removed once the archive is ready to accept ddebs.

NOTES

If the DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS environment variable contains nostrip, nothing will be stripped, in accordance with Debian policy (section 10.1 "Binaries"). This will also inhibit the creation of automatic "ddebs".

The creation of automatic "ddebs" can also be prevented by adding noddebs to the DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS environment variable.

CONFORMS TO

Debian policy, version 3.0.1

SEE ALSO

debhelper(7)

This program is a part of debhelper.

AUTHOR

Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>