[lldb-dev] Questions from a Linux user

[Jason Molenda]

Hi Eli,

On Jun 8, 2010, at 10:01 PM, Eli Friedman wrote:

> Hi everyone, a few quick questions:
> 
> 1. Is someone already planning on adding an LLVM-compatible build
> system so that I can just stick lldb into llvm/tools/lldb and run
> make?

Chris' answer is correct - no one is working on this right now, we've been using Xcode to build lldb.  We'd be happy to have a makefile build setup.

> 2. What else is necessary to get this running on Linux, at least to
> the point where it can parse an executable?

There's an ELF object file reader over at source/Plugins/ObjectFile/ELF/ObjectFileELF.cpp but I don't know if Greg has tried running it on actual elf binaries yet - it may just be a sketch of how that file needs to look.  You'd want to look at include/lldb/Symbol/ObjectFile.h to see the ObjectFile interface that it is implementing.

Launching a process on Linux will involve a lot more work.  lldb is designed to support multiple OSes/architectures/ABIs/etc but so far it has only been implemented on one; I'm sure there are unintentional Mac OS X assumptions.  We are interested in seeing lldb ported to linux but I don't want to understate how much work would be involved in this -- and it's important to note that lldb is still early in its development and there are still large-scale internal reorganizations/reworkings/rethinkings happening on a regular basis; it may be a bit early to start porting it to other OSes.  Or rather, it will be less difficult when the sources are a bit more mature.

> 3. Is there some sort of overview of the architecture written up?  I'm
> finding it very hard to figure out what is where.

Not much, we need to work on that.  The header files are pretty descriptive; look in the include/lldb/ directory to start.  The top level concepts to start with are Target, Module, and Process.  

> 4. Are there plans to put up doxygen pages on the website?

I see no problem with that if it's helpful to people.

J