Comment 7 for bug 303522

Yes, I know how to do it. My principal point, though, is that in general one doesn't bother installing debug symbols for a particular application until after one's had a crash -- which is too late.

The ideal time to make the decision to install debug libraries would be during system installation.

I agree that for the vast majority of people, they shouldn't be messing with this, because the vast majority of people are never going to be submitting bug reports. For those of us who try had to provide meaningful bug reports as our contribution to help make [K]ubuntu better (by submitting reports either to launchpad or to bugs.kde.org), it would be tremendously helpful to be able to make the decision *once*, and then have the debug versions installed so that they are already present when a crash occurs. That way we can provide a meaningful backtrace without having to separately install new libraries and then hoping that the crash repeats itself (which it may not do for weeks or months).

"brainstorm" might be the appropriate place, because perhaps there's a better way than the way I'm suggesting. I'm just trying to think of a way to avoid two syndromes, both of which are currently all-too-common for those of us who habitually file bug reports:

1) "the program crashed; now I'll install debug symbols and hope that it crashes again"
2) "the program crashed and I'd installed debugging symbols for that application, but I didn't realise that it also uses library X and I didn't install the debug version of that library"