How To Install pahole on Debian 12

Learn how to install pahole on Debian 12 with this tutorial. pahole is set of advanced DWARF utilities

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install pahole on Debian 12.

What is pahole

pahole is:

This package contains tools that use the DWARF debugging information inserted in ELF binaries by the compiler. This information is used by debuggers (e.g. GDB), and other tools such as systemtap.

Utilities in the dwarves suite include:

  • pahole: finds alignment holes in structs and classes in languages such as C/C++, CPU cacheline alignment. Helps repack those structures to achieve more cache hits.
  • codiff: a diff like tool to compare the effects changes in source code generate on the resulting binaries
  • pfunct: displays all sorts of information about functions, inlines, etc.
  • pdwtags: pretty-prints DWARF information
  • pglobal: lists global symbols
  • prefcnt: counts DWARF tags usage
  • syscse: system call sign extender
  • dtagnames: lists tag names

There are three methods to install pahole on Debian 12. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install pahole Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install pahole using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install pahole

Install pahole Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install pahole using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install pahole

Install pahole Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install pahole using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install pahole

How To Uninstall pahole on Debian 12

To uninstall only the pahole package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove pahole

Uninstall pahole And Its Dependencies

To uninstall pahole and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 12, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove pahole

Remove pahole Configurations and Data

To remove pahole configuration and data from Debian 12 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge pahole

Remove pahole configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove pahole configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge pahole

Dependencies

pahole have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install pahole package on Debian 12 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.