[rkv]

Did not know that, thank you. Do you know happen to know how it is done? When I pull the debian tarball for nginx (which has a -dbg package with symbol files) I see:

> dh_strip --dbg-package=nginx-$(*)-dbg

Which is the exact same command I use in my rules file. But instead of giving me a -dbg package with symbol files debuild gives me a -dbg package with the unstripped binary. Not sure what I am missing. I am following the DebugPackage guide on the Debian Wiki[1].

1. https://wiki.debian.org/DebugPackage

[JoshTriplett]

With current Debian, you don't need to do anything at all, and in particular you should not pass --dbg-package. Instead, dh_strip will automatically create a -dbgsym package containing detached debug symbols, if your package contains a library or binary.

Also, make sure that you build with debug symbols enabled in the first place; the default CFLAGS should do that.

[rkv]

Sorry, I'm not asking about current Debian. In your previous comment you mention that the symbol packages are not new. I'm wondering how people have been creating them on Debian 8.