Static library - debug or release?

Question

I come from Windows and I generated a C++ static library (libMyLib.a) with gcc.

In Windows you can actually generate a debug static library (.lib) with debugging information and unoptimized; then you can also generate a release static library (.lib) without debugging information and meant to be linked in the final product statically.

I did

$ objdump --syms libMyLib.a | grep "debug"

and got a bunch of lines like

0000000000002ea0 l     F .text  00000000000001fc _ZN12_GLOBAL__N_121debugMyFunction2Ejllj

since there's the 'debug' suffix I believe this static library is a debug one with debugging information embedded into it. I'm not sure why this is extremely smaller compared to the Windows one (300 MB for Windows while only 13 MB for Linux).. I suspect some debugging information is missing.

I have two questions at this point:

1. Am I right in stating that the static .a library is a debug one containing all the necessary debug information?
2. Are release static libraries generated in linux (ready to be linked in the final product, static library, no debugging info) at all? And if they are, how can I make one?

Answer 1

A binary file, wether it is a static lib, a dynamic lib, an executable program or anything else, may contain or not debug information. It's your compilation option that determine wether debug information should be generated or not. For example, for gcc, see: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Debugging-Options.html