manuals: document minidebuginfo

(From yocto-docs rev: 1a6327f2d92b390248afb45119d79bb05cda3dcc)

Signed-off-by: Etienne Cordonnier <ecordonnier@snap.com>
Reviewed-by: Michael Opdenacker <michael.opdenacker@bootlin.com>
Signed-off-by: Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>

2 files changed, 18 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/documentation/dev-manual/debugging.rst b/documentation/dev-manual/debugging.rst
index bd1e716b0b..834eade766 100644
--- a/documentation/dev-manual/debugging.rst
+++ b/documentation/dev-manual/debugging.rst
@@ -1173,6 +1173,21 @@ To support this kind of debugging, you need do the following:
    Consider that this will reduce the application's performance and is
    recommended only for debugging purposes.
 
+Enabling Minidebuginfo
+======================
+
+Enabling the :term:`DISTRO_FEATURES` minidebuginfo adds a compressed ELF section ``.gnu_debugdata``
+to all binary files, containing only function names, and thus increasing the size of the
+binaries only by 5 to 10%. For comparison, full debug symbols can be 10 times as big as
+a stripped binary, and it is thus not always possible to deploy full debug symbols.
+Minidebuginfo data allows, on the one side, to retrieve a call-stack using
+GDB (command backtrace) without deploying full debug symbols to the target. It also
+allows to retrieve a symbolicated call-stack when using ``systemd-coredump`` to manage
+coredumps (commands ``coredumpctl list`` and ``coredumpctl info``).
+
+This feature was created by Fedora, see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo for
+more details.
+
 Other Debugging Tips
 ====================
 
diff --git a/documentation/ref-manual/features.rst b/documentation/ref-manual/features.rst
index dd14339bc2..b9d3b30f18 100644
--- a/documentation/ref-manual/features.rst
+++ b/documentation/ref-manual/features.rst
@@ -161,6 +161,9 @@ metadata, as extra layers can define their own:
 -  *keyboard:* Include keyboard support (e.g. keymaps will be loaded
    during boot).
 
+-  *minidebuginfo:* Add minimal debug symbols :ref:`(minidebuginfo)<dev-manual/debugging:enabling minidebuginfo>`
+   to binary files containing, allowing ``coredumpctl`` and ``gdb`` to show symbolicated stack traces.
+
 -  *multiarch:* Enable building applications with multiple architecture
    support.