Berkeley DB Reference Guide: Compile-time configuration

There are three compile-time configuration options that assist in debugging Berkeley DB and Berkeley DB applications:

--enable-debug: If you want to build Berkeley DB with -g as the C and C++ compiler flag, enter --enable-debug as an argument to configure. This will create Berkeley DB with debugging symbols, as well as load various Berkeley DB routines that can be called directly from a debugger to display database page content, cursor queues, and so forth. (Note that the -O optimization flag will still be specified. To compile with only the -g, explicitly set the CFLAGS environment variable before configuring.)
--enable-diagnostic: If you want to build Berkeley DB with debugging run-time sanity checks and with DIAGNOSTIC #defined during compilation, enter --enable-diagnostic as an argument to configure. This will cause a number of special checks to be performed when Berkeley DB is running. This flag should not be defined when configuring to build production binaries because it degrades performance.
--enable-umrw: When compiling Berkeley DB for use in run-time memory consistency checkers (in particular, programs that look for reads and writes of uninitialized memory), use --enable-umrw as an argument to configure. This guarantees, among other things, that Berkeley DB will completely initialize allocated pages rather than initializing only the minimum necessary amount.