[LLVMdev] RFC: Improving our DWARF (and ELF) emission testing capabilities

[Eli Bendersky]

>>>>> > I'm fine with this as long as llvm-dwarfdump gets maintained.
>>>>>
>>>>> I agree, and as I said in the original email, in the long term I
>>>>> believe llvm-dwarfdump is the correct solution.
>>>>
>>>> The problem is that if no one is working on testing these sorts of things
>>>> with llvm-dwarfdump then it won't be maintained for this purpose.
>>>>
>>>> See
>>>> elf-dump and people not expanding/fixing bugs in llvm-objdump and using that
>>>> for tests.
>>>>
>>> Can you clarify/elaborate on this last sentence?
>>>
>> Sure. People are updating, modifying and adding new tests that use
>> elf-dump and not updating, modifying or fixing llvm-objdump to test the
>> same thing.
>
> Speaking as a relative newbie, I don't see any way to know that elf-dump
> is deprecated in favor of llvm-objdump; neither of them are mentioned
> anywhere on the website.  Nor is llvm-dwarfdump for that matter.

By the very nature of elf-dump's output, I would expect anyone (even a
newbie) to look for an alternative (examples in other tests) or at
least ask on the mailing list and/or IRC. Moreover, hopefully folks
knowledgeable about this area would react on a patch that does
something that could be done better.

> D'you think there could be some mention of these on the Command Guide
> or Testing Infrastructure Guide pages?

Yes!

> http://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/index.html
> http://llvm.org/docs/TestingGuide.html
> (Yeah, yeah, I know, "patches welcome.")

And, I will add, "appreciated".

Eli