Bug#1146094: upstream's Valgrind suppressions and debugger helpers should be available in a package

[Alberto Garcia]

On Sat, Aug 29, 2026 at 05:42:40PM +0000, John Scott wrote:

> I have discovered from reading https://docs.webkit.org/Build%20%26%20Debug/DebuggingOnTheCommandLine.html
> that WebKit, like many major projects, has Python scripts for GDB
> and LLDB to enhance the experience of debugging WebKit. [...] This
> should be installed in a way so that GDB can discover it.

Hello and thanks for the bug report.

I think that one problem with this is that the Debian WebKit packages
are not really meant for debugging or development; they are only for
users to provide more information when they report bugs.

We purposely build WebKit with the bare minimum of debugging symbols
(-g1) because the packages are otherwise too big. You cannot provide a
lot of debugging information with those but I think it's usually good
enough. See also #1032445.

> The biggest hurdle here is that none of these files are shipped in
> the WebKitGTK source tarball that is generated.

The other problem is this one, yes.

> Perhaps folks using these features so far are mostly doing new
> development on WebKit itself from a Git checkout

Yes, everyone working on the project uses a Git checkout because
(among other things) it comes with a lot of development tools and
scripts that are essential to the workflow. The source tarballs are
only meant for downstreams to build their own binaries.

Berto