[LLVMdev] DWARF 2/3 backwards compatibility?

[Renato Golin]

On 18 October 2012 02:53, Robinson, Paul <Paul.Robinson at am.sony.com> wrote:
> I had a "quality suite" at a previous job; it was the result of many PY
> of effort.  It was also debugger-based, which is a mixed blessing; you
> get a lot of DWARF-parsing code for free, but then you get a lot of
> debugger bugs for free too!  And you don't get to test the DWARF
> directly, you get to test how the debugger uses the DWARF. Not really
> optimal, but still--a whole lot better than nothing.

The trade off also goes in the other direction. If you had a strict
Dwarf parser green, that would mean next to nothing as to what that
Dwarf would represent in the debugger(s).

AFAIK, most Dwarf compatible debuggers are also GDB compatible, which
means that even the idiotic things that GDB does will probably be
understood by other debuggers.


> I mean really, DWARF 3 was published in 2005!)

Go tell that to embedded folks and their certifications! ;)

But yeah, focusing on Dwarf 3 would be the best way forward, adding a
little bit for compatibility (rather than making Dwarf 2 a full-class
citizen).


-- 
cheers,
--renato

http://systemcall.org/