Troubleshooting Debug Information Not Available

Symptoms

After running the Intel Advisor tools to analyze your running application's target, the displayed report may contain information about your target's debug (symbol) information that is unexpected or does not make sense. When debug information is not available, the ability to use binary-to-source correlation prevents the display of source code. For example:

• After running the Survey tool, a message may appear near the top of the Survey Report window indicating Some target modules do not contain debug information. After viewing the message and writing down module names that lack debug information, you can click the red in the top-right corner to close it.

• When viewing a Report window, a column that should contain a Source location or a function name instead contains the target's executable-name in square brackets, [Unknown], a question mark ?, or is blank. Also, a broken or missing icon can indicate that sources are not available, such as , , , or for a Survey loop.

• When viewing a Source window, a column that should contain source code or a source location instead contains source is not available or Intel Advisor cannot show source code for this location message instead of the expected data. Also, a broken or missing icon can indicate that sources are not available (listed above).

• When viewing a Source window, the Call Stack indicates that sources are not available for the starting (top) line, such as containing a broken icon (listed above).

• In a context menu, the items View Source or Edit Source may appear as dimmed.

However, if your application calls library functions, you should expect to see some symptoms about sources not being available. For example, the C/C++ sample application stats calls certain library functions to calculate standard deviation or similar values. Because the source code for the library functions is not available, you will see that source code is not available within the called library functions, but is available for the related project source files. In this case, see the help topic Troubleshooting Sources Not Available.

Details

The most common causes are:

• The build option(s) did not request debug information when building the target executable. Debug information must be present for Intel Advisor tools to display source information. When building native code targets, specify the appropriate compiler and linker options to ensure the target executable contains debug information.

• The appropriate project properties in the Intel Advisor GUI did not provide the correct binary/symbol or source locations.

Possible Correction Strategies

• Do the following:

  1. Check the build settings for the target to ensure they specify debug information option(s). See the help topic Build Settings ... for your language (use the links under See Also below).

  2. Adjust your makefile or build script to specify debug information option(s).

  3. Rebuild the target.

  4. Run the Intel Advisor analysis tool(s) again.

• If you are using the Intel Advisor GUI, check the Project Properties dialog as described in the help topic Specifying Project Properties Using the Intel Advisor GUI to make sure that:

  • Binary and symbol files are specified in the Binary/Symbol Search tab.

  • Source locations are specified in the Source Search tab.

• Investigate other possible causes, such as the compiler not generating debug information for a source line or the source file, the linker not including debug information in the debug information database, or whether the debug information database was not being found during the finalization step by an Intel Advisor analysis tool. For example, the last issue can occur if the debug information database was not moved to the location with the target executable.