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So my plan was to add the debug symbols to just the specific files i care about
AFAIK there is no issue with debug symbols, you have all symbols even without DEBUG=1, they are in elf file and kept on PC side, not part of binary in device. What DEBUG=1 does is turning off optimizations so the binary is much larger. RELEASE=1 turns off extra assert checks (also not needed for debugging). You should be able to debug even without DEBUG=1 and with RELEASE=1. What can happen is that some code is optimized out so the debugger will not match all lines 1:1 when the code is not there, however mostly it works just fine.
BTW, you can also run make BOARD=... lst to generate .lst text file with C and assembly language mix and all symbols so you can figure out how the code really looks if you get lost when debugging optimized code.
Progress being made.
helpful links
debugging nordic chips
gdb commands
So after your running gdb is connect to your server you need to
Which flashes the code onto the device. From there you can do your next and continue commands.
You can also edit your ~/.gdbinit file so you don't have to hit enter every time.
next problem
So i have testing the above stuff on a nRF52840DK which has lots of flash. But the current micro is a nRF52832 with barely any. So my plan was to add the debug symbols to just the specific files i care about. So this compiles but doesn't seem to add any size to the code base. So thats the next thing to figure out.
trying to add special debug symbols