I think gradle_do_not_strip is better here. It clearly indicates that it’s related to Gradle and aligns with the default behavior where Android strips symbols from .so files unless explicitly told not to. In contrast, separate_debug_symbols doesn’t make the Gradle context obvious and also flips the default behavior, now it avoids stripping by default.

I want to preserve the default gradle behaviour.

The more I think about this, the more I think this PR is the way to go:

• It's a little weird/unexpected that gradle_do_not_strip=yes prevents the generation of the separate debug symbols (ie there's no native-debug-symbols), because "not stripping" doesn't imply (at least to me) not generating the separate symbols. But if the option was separate_debug_symbols then it's very clear that yes generates separate symbols and no doesn't
• PR [Web] Fix separate_debug_symbols=yes and debug experience #105808 was just posted implementing separate_debug_symbols for the web, and that's another platform setting expectations around this argument that Android would be different from

• PR [Web] Fix separate_debug_symbols=yes and debug experience #105808 was just posted implementing separate_debug_symbols for the web, and that's another platform setting expectations around this argument that Android would be different from

@dsnopek This is a good argument to keep consistency across the platforms, so I'm good for this PR to go as is!

I want to preserve the default gradle behaviour.

@syntaxerror247 The added logic should keep the default behavior:

if env["debug_symbols"] and not env["separate_debug_symbols"]:
        gradle_process += ["-PdoNotStrip=true"]

The addition of the doNotStrip=true flag is also guarded by the debug_symbols parameter so:

• on regular build (e.g: scons platform=android generate_android_binaries=yes, gradle will strip the generated binaries, maintaining the default behavior
• on build with debug_symbols enabled (e.g: scons platform=android generate_android_binaries=yes debug_symbols=yes), the doNotStrip=true parameter will be added, causing the generated binaries to include the debug symbols. I think we can argue this should be the default behavior when enabling debug_symbols as it allows engine developers the ability to quickly investigate issues without having to reach for an external debug symbols file

Thanks!