[LLVMdev] PDB debug info

[Nathan Jeffords]

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12 September 2012 20:49, Nathan Jeffords <blunted2night at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 9:46 AM, Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> /Z7, that's the one. Maybe this approach can be used by LLVM? I presume
>>> LLVM is capable of producing CV info already? Maybe this configuration is
>>> already possible?
>>>  It'd be interesting to try it out, CV in the COFF objects, and see if
>>> the linker makes sense of it at link time...
>>>
>>>
>> I was able to get clang to produce COFF files with embedded DWARF
>> debug relatively easily, which produces executables debuggable via the
>> MinGW tool-chain.
>>
>
> This sounds effectively identical to what I have now using MinGW GCC to
> produce COFF binaries with DWARF debug info, and then running cv2pdb after
> linking to extract a PDB from the binary. It works, but it means I can't
> link against MSVC libs/objects because of the conflicting debug info
> formats. :/
>
>
> To support another debug format would be difficult I think, though I'm no
>> expert on the subject. Currently LLVM internally represents everything more
>> or less directly in DWARF. All of the debug meta-data attached to the IR is
>> a slightly higher representation of DWARF data-structures. While there is a
>> debug info builder class the insulates front ends from the details of DWARF
>> to some extent, it is not complete isolation. I think the
>> only feasible approach is to translate the DWARF info into CV info at a
>> lower level, perhaps after the initial COFF object file containing DWARF
>> has been emitted.
>>
>
> Okay, so CV isn't supported, not sure where I got that idea >_<
> Hmmm, okay, well I think I'm back where I started using the MinGW
> toolchain in that case...
>
> Oh, it's all so problematic ;)
>
>
It might be feasible to convert DWARF to CV within the object file prior to
linking, then you should be able to link against MSVC libraries.


> I'd also argue that the VS debugger is possibly the single biggest
>>> productivity enhancement offered by the IDE ;)
>>> And yeah, I'm in the situation where I need to link against MSVC built
>>> code, so I need PDB at the end of the day.
>>>
>>> Your approach would be really handy in other cases though, DWARF plugin
>>> for VisualStudio would be a generally useful tool.
>>>
>>
>> From what I was able to gather while looking into a debugger plugin, the
>> existing user interface would drive all debuggers, thus the user should
>> have more or less the same debugging experience with any fully
>> implemented plugin.
>>
>
> This sounds like what WinGDB does. As I understood it, there is a problem
> with WinGDB, where they said they weren't able to actually implement their
> debugger plugin without implementing a custom project type, which mutually
> excludes the Visual Studio build architecture.
>

This maybe why google seems to have abandoned the idea of building a
debugger plugin.
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