[flang-commits] [flang] [flang] Add design document for debug info generation. (PR #86939)

[Kiran Chandramohan via flang-commits]

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+# Debug Generation
+
+Application developers spend a significant time debugging the applications that
+they create. Hence it is important that a compiler provide support for a good
+debug experience. DWARF[1] is the standard debugging file format used by
+compilers and debuggers. The LLVM infrastructure supports debug info generation
+using metadata[2]. Support for generating debug metadata is present
+in MLIR by way of MLIR attributes. Flang can leverage these MLIR attributes to
+generate good debug information.
+
+We can break the work for debug generation into two separate tasks:
+1) Line Table generation
+2) Full debug generation
+The support for Fortran Debug in LLVM infrastructure[3] has made great progress
+due to many Fortran frontends adopting LLVM as the backend as well as the
+availability of the Classic Flang compiler.
+
+## Driver Flags
+By default, Flang will not generate any debug or linetable information.
+Debug information will be generated if the following flags are present.
+
+-gline-tables-only, -g1 : Emit debug line number tables only  
+-g : Emit full debug info
+
+## Line Table Generation
+
+There is existing AddDebugFoundationPass which add `FusedLoc` with a
+`SubprogramAttr` on FuncOp. This allows MLIR to generate LLVM IR metadata
+for that function. However, following values are hardcoded at the moment. These
+will instead be passed from the driver.
+
+- Details of the compiler (name and version and git hash).
+- Language Standard. We can set it to Fortran95 for now and periodically
+revise it when full support for later standards is available.
+- Optimisation Level.
+- Type of debug generated (linetable/full debug).
+- Calling Convention: `DW_CC_normal` by default and `DW_CC_program` if it is
+the main program.
+
+`DISubroutineTypeAttr` currently has a fixed type. This will be changed to
+match the signature of the actual function/subroutine.
+
+
+## Full Debug Generation
+
+Full debug info will include metadata to describe functions, variables and
+types. Flang will generate debug metadata in the form of MLIR attributes. These
+attributes will be converted to the format expected by LLVM IR in DebugTranslation[4].
+
+Debug metadata generation can be broken down in 2 steps.
+
+1. MLIR attributes are generated by reading information from AST or FIR. This
+step can happen anytime before or during conversion to LLVM dialect. An example
+of the metadata generated in this step is `DILocalVariableAttr` or
+`DIDerivedTypeAttr`.
+
+2. Changes that can only happen during or after conversion to LLVM dialect. The
+example of this is passing `DIGlobalVariableExpressionAttr` while
+creating `LLVM::GlobalOp`. Another example will be generation of `DbgDeclareOp`
+that is required for local variables. It can only be created after conversion to
+LLVM dialect as it requires LLVM.Ptr type. The changes required for step 2 are
+quite minimal. The bulk of the work happens in step 1.
+
+One design decision that we need to make is to decide where to perform step 1.
+Here are some possible options:
+
+**During conversion to LLVM dialect**
+
+Pros:
+1. Do step 1 and 2 in one place.
+2. No chance of missing any change introduced by an earlier transformation.
+
+Cons:
+1. Passing a lot of information from the driver as discussed in the line table
+section above may muddle interface of FIRToLLVMConversion.
+2. `DeclareOp` is removed before this pass.
+3. Even if `DeclareOp` is retained, creating debug metadata while some ops have
+been converted to LLVMdialect and others are not may cause its own issues. We
+have to walk the ops chain to extract the information which may be problematic
+in this case.
+4. Some source information is lost by this point. Examples include
+information about namelists, source line information about field of derived
+types etc.
+
+**During a pass before conversion to LLVM dialect**
+
+This is similar to what AddDebugFoundationPass is currently doing.
+
+Pros:
+1. One central location dedicated to debug information processing. This can
+result in a cleaner implementation.
+2. Similar to above, less chance of missing any change introduced by an earlier
+transformation.
+
+Cons:
+1. Step 2 still need to happen during conversion to LLVM dialect. But
+changes required for step 2 are quite minimal.
+2. Similar to above, some source information may be lost by this point.
+
+**During Lowering from AST**
+
+Pros
+1. We have better source information.
+
+Cons:
+1. There may be change in the code after lowering which may not be
+reflected in debug information.
+2. Comments on an earlier PR [5] advised against this approach.
+
+## Design
+
+The design below assumes that we are extracting the information from FIR.
+If we generate debug metadata during lowering then the description below
+may need to change. Although the generated metadata remains the same in
+both cases.
+
+The AddDebugFoundationPass will be renamed to AddDebugInfo Pass. The
+information mentioned in the line info section above will be passed to it from
+the driver. This pass will run quite late in the pipeline but before
+`DecalreOp` is removed.
----------------
kiranchandramohan wrote:

```suggestion
`DeclareOp` is removed.
```

https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/86939