[Lldb-commits] [PATCH] D53368: [Symbol] Search symbols with name and type in a symbol file

[Pavel Labath via Phabricator via lldb-commits]

labath added a comment.

I've recently started looking at adding a new symbol file format (breakpad symbols). While researching the best way to achieve that, I started comparing the operation of PDB and DWARF symbol files. I noticed a very important difference there, and I think that is the cause of our problems here. In the DWARF implementation, a symbol file is an overlay on top of an object file - it takes the data contained by the object file and presents it in a more structured way.

However, that is not the case with PDB (both implementations). These take the debug information from a completely different file, which is not backed by an ObjectFile instance, and then present that. Since the SymbolFile interface requires them to be backed by an object file, they both pretend they are backed by the original EXE file, but in reality the data comes from elsewhere.

If we had an ObjectFilePDB (which not also not ideal, though in a way it is a better fit to the current lldb organization), then this could expose the PDB symtab via the existing ObjectFile interface and we could reuse the existing mechanism for merging symtabs from two object files.

I am asking this because now I am facing a choice in how to implement breakpad symbols. I could go the PDB way, and read the symbols without an intervening object file, or I could create an ObjectFileBreakpad and then (possibly) a SymbolFileBreakpad sitting on top of that.

The drawbacks of the PDB approach I see are:

- I lose the ability to do matching of the (real) object file via symbol vendors. The PDB symbol files now basically implement their own little symbol vendors inside them, which is mostly fine if you just need to find the PDB next to the exe file. However, things could get a bit messy if you wanted to implement some more complex searching on multiple paths, or downloading them from the internet.
- I'll hit issues when attempting to unwind (which is the real meat of the breakpad symbols), because unwind info is currently provided via the ObjectFile interface (ObjectFile::GetUnwindTable).

The drawbacks of the ObjectFile approach are:

- more code  - it needs a new ObjectFile and a new SymbolFile class (possibly also a SymbolVendor)
- it will probably look a bit weird because Breakpad files (and PDBs) aren't really object files

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, if you have any.


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https://reviews.llvm.org/D53368