The ffx debug symbol-index commands help manage Fuchsia components’ debug symbols in your development environment.
During development, debug symbols for a Fuchsia component are generated as part of build artifacts. A file containing debug symbols has .symbol-index.json as a postfix (for example, my-component.symbol-index.json).
Registering a Fuchsia component's debug symbols in your development environment enables the following workflows:
In addition to registering locally generated debug symbols, you can also configure your environment to retrieve debug symbols from an online storage (for instance, Google Cloud Storage). Once an online storage is added in your global symbol-index configuration, various Fuchsia debugging tools (such as ffx log and ffx debug connect) can automatically download and use the debug symbols available in the online storage.
In a Fuchsia development environment, a registration of debug symbols often takes place in the background. Some Fuchsia tools are configured to invoke the registration of debug symbols (using ffx debug symbol-index add) upon detection of debug symbols, so you may never need to manually register the debug symbols of your Fuchsia component during development. For instance, if you‘re using Fuchsia’s Bazel rules, the debug symbols get registered automatically as part of the build. However, when necessary, you could use the ffx debug symbol-index commands to manage debug symbols directly.
To view your global symbol-index configuration, run the following command:
ffx debug symbol-index list
This command prints output similar to the following:
$ ffx debug symbol-index list SymbolIndex { includes: [ "/usr/alice/home/my-fuchsia-project/my-component.symbol-index.json", ], build_id_dirs: [], ids_txts: [], gcs_flat: [ GcsFlat { url: "gs://our-fuchsia-project/debug", require_authentication: false, }, ], }
Important: A registration of debug symbols is invoked automatically by other tools in a Fuchsia development environment. A manual registration of debug symbols is required only when your environment doesn't support this automatic setup.
To register debug symbols in your environment, run the following command:
ffx debug symbol-index add <PATH_TO_DEBUG_SYMBOLS>
Replace PATH_TO_DEBUG_SYMBOLS with an absolute path to a debug symbols file.
The example below registers the debug symbols of the my-component component:
$ ffx debug symbol-index add /usr/alice/home/my-fuchsia-project/my-component.symbol-index.json
When the registration is successful, the command exits silently without output.
If you want to verify the registration, see List registered debug symbols.
To remove debug symbols from your global symbol-index configuration, run the following command:
Note: Run ffx debug symbol-index list to check the registered paths in your global symbol-index configuration first. Then use the exact path as input to the command below.
ffx debug symbol-index remove <PATH_TO_DEBUG_SYMBOLS>
Replace PATH_TO_DEBUG_SYMBOLS with the exact path to a registered debug symbols file to be removed.
The example below removes the debug symbols of the my-component component:
$ ffx debug symbol-index remove /usr/alice/home/my-fuchsia-project/my-component.symbol-index.json
When the removal is successful, the command exits silently without output.
Deleting a registered debug symbols file on the host machine does not mean that your global symbol-index configuration also gets updated automatically.
To remove any stale paths (pointing to deleted debug symbols files) from the global symbol-index configuration, run the following command:
ffx debug symbol-index clean
For instance, if the /usr/alice/home/my-fuchsia-project directory no longer exists on the host machine, this command removes the /usr/alice/home/my-fuchsia-project/my-component.symbol-index.json entry from the global symbol-index configuration.
