debuginfo rpms?

From: Tom Horsley (tom.horsley_at_att.net)
Date: 11/29/03 

Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 03:43:12 GMT

I've been looking at the "debuginfo" packages rpmbuild generates,
and I'm wondering if anyone knows the appropriate logic to teach
a debugger to use them if they happen to be installed?

My main wonderment is (to pick an example): How does the debugger
know that the /lib/libc-2.3.2.so file loaded in the process it is
debugging actually matches the /usr/lib/debug/lib/libc-2.3.2.so.debug
file?

Should it just assume that the file matches because the names
are the same with the .debug extension, or is there some magical
undocumented section in the .debug file that has a checksum the
debugger can compare, or should the debugger look at the sizes
and offsets of all the sections with the same name to check that
they match or what?

Better yet, is there any documentation on these debuginfo things
somewhere (google can't find any with any search criteria I am
able to compose :-).