Are debug builds supported?

[nikhilweee]

Comment:

I see a --with-pydebug option specified in the recipe folder. I wonder what's it for?

python-feedstock/recipe/build_base.sh

Lines 51 to 58 in 018b465

	declare -a _dbg_opts
	if [[ ${DEBUG_PY} == yes ]]; then
	# This Python will not be usable with non-debug Python modules.
	_dbg_opts+=(--with-pydebug)
	DBG=d
	else
	DBG=
	fi

Me along with a few others have been on the lookout for a debug build (conda-forge/staged-recipes#4812) and I wonder if this is the way to go?

[jakirkham]

It's possible to build locally (as seen above), but we do not currently publish debug packages

[nikhilweee]

Is the community interested in reviving #86? Although I don't have much experience writing conda recipes, I am eager to take a shot at it. What comes to my mind right now is to add another output named python-debug in meta.yaml but I think there might be cleaner ways to do it. Happy to discuss further.

[jakirkham]

Idk when I've asked other developers about whether a debug Python is useful, have heard they may want to make additional changes to the python build itself, use other debug libraries in the build, and/or build other downstream dependencies with changes. Given this, it has been unclear (at least to me) that there is one debug build of Python that would be helpful for these different use cases. If we can find a single build that is generally useful, then it seems worthwhile to add. If not, maybe we focus our efforts on making it easy to build locally