[cfe-dev] Where do we really need mangled names

[Greg Clayton]

>From a performance standpoint, we do win when things are in the accelerator tables. LLDB doesn't grub around in the DWARF unless our accelerator tables are _not_ there (in which case we must manually create the accelerator tables by reading all DWARF very slowly). If they are there, they are assumed to be valid and we have been trying to hold clang to that standard. clang must put the plain and mangled name in the DWARF for it to be emitted in the accelerator tables, so we have been slowly improving clang as much as we can to get the accelerator tables accurate as. So LLDB won't even look in the DWARF unless it sees something in the accelerator tables (the __apple_XXX accelerator tables that I create and Eric Christopher then implemented in clang and in the DWARF committee).

Greg

On Feb 17, 2014, at 10:24 AM, David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 10:02 AM, Greg Clayton <gclayton at apple.com> wrote:
> 
> On Feb 15, 2014, at 2:57 PM, David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > So when comparing Clang's debug info strings to GCC's I came across a couple of disparities hinging on the inclusion of linkage names on certain functions. Here are a few differences:
> >
> > * Clang includes linkage names on file-local (static or anon namespace) functions. GCC does not.
> > * Clang does not include the linkage name of member functions of function-local classes. GCC does, if the function is non-static/non-anonymous namespace and inline (ie: the member function has linkonce-odr linkage, not internal linkage)
> > * Clang does not include the linkage name for constructors and destructors - this may be necessary due to the difference (GCC duplicates, Clang has one version call the other) in implementations, but I doubt it. I assume we still emit multiple member functions, one to describe each version of the ctor/dtor we're emitting.
> >
> > It looks like at least for the first case, this may've been deliberate ( http://llvm.org/viewvc/llvm-project?view=revision&revision=154570 which doesn't explain why and points to rdar://11079003 which Jim Grosbach told didn't have a great deal more context) but I don't have enough context to understand why and whether it's just a GCC bug that they don't emit it, or something tools should handle better, etc.
> >
> > So - any thoughts on the disparity and if/why it's necessary?
> 
> It is necessary if you want your debugger to be able to evaluate an expression that fully qualifies the name of the static:
> 
> (lldb) expr a::b::g_foo
> 
> If you don't have the mangled name, you can only do:
> 
> (lldb) expr g_foo
> 
> A cursory experiment with GDB doesn't seem to exhibit this behavior. Have I correctly captured the nature of your example here:
> 
> $ cat mang.cpp
> namespace x {
> static void func() {}
> }
> 
> int main() { x::func(); }
> $ g++-4.8.1 mang.cpp -g
> $ gdb a.out
> (gdb) start
> Temporary breakpoint 1 at 0x40055a: file mang.cpp, line 5.
> Starting program: /tmp/dbginfo/a.out 
> 
> Temporary breakpoint 1, main () at mang.cpp:5
> 5       int main() { x::func(); }
> (gdb) p x::func()
> $1 = void
> (gdb) exit 
> $ llvm-dwarfdump a.out | grep linkage_name
> $
> 
> No mention of any linkage names yet the debugger appears to have been able to identify the fully qualified name and call the function.
> 
>  
> Then you might get many many many different versions if more than one file contains a static named "g_foo".
> 
> I'm not quite sure what you're saying here - this is true of any static, even those in namespaces - there may be (will be) multiple across a project all meaning different things. The mangled name won't be unique to any particular one.
>  
> Also, users never tend to fully qualify names and might try to execute:
> 
> (lldb) expr b::g_foo
> 
> From within namespace 'a' or just as a partial identifier that the user expects the debugger to search for? I'm not sure if GDB offers this functionality (I realize you're talking about LLDB, but I don't have it setup to experiment with) so I can't compare, but I don't see any reason GDB wouldn't be able to implement that without the mangled name too.
>  
> expecting to see "a::b::g_foo". LLDB is able to find these variables by first looking for all the variable base names that match "g_foo", then removing any whose demangled named doesn't contain "b::g_foo".
> 
> So the mangled names on statics allows debuggers to do the right thing and be able to correctly display qualified static variables and is very important for good debugging.
> 
> GDB /seems/ to be getting away without it and providing similar functionality (I could be wrong - perhaps my examples aren't what you had in mind).
> 
> Is it just that it's a performance optimization compared to having to walk the DIE parent chain to build a fully qualified name? If that's the case, can we quantify that perf/size tradeoff? (though at that point it's a fair question about why have the mangled name at all - I'm not really sure what GDB uses it for when it is present (on externally visible functions))
> 
> - Dave