Agreed. Fedora/Centos/RHEL have debug packages though, so the symbols are available for most software that you've got on your machine. GDB prints out a message

Agreed. Fedora/Centos/RHEL have debug packages though, so the symbols are available for most software that you've got on your machine. GDB prints out a message reminding you to install them, but doesn't actually do it for you. We also have PolicyKit, so in principle GDB could just ask for those packages to be installed. We should close the gap, and while we're at it we should make PolicyKit not ask for the root password when installing debug packages. Then it could be a seamless process, at least for software installed from the official packages.