[llvm-dev] RFC: CodeView debug info emission in Clang/LLVM

[Adrian Prantl via llvm-dev]

> On Oct 29, 2015, at 10:11 AM, Dave Bartolomeo via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> Proposed Design
> How Debug Info is Generated
> The CodeView type records for a compilation unit will be generated by the front-end for the source language (Clang, in the case of C and C++). The front-end has access to the full type system and AST of the language, which is necessary to generate accurate debug type info. The type records will be represented as metadata in the LLVM IR, similar to how DWARF debug info is represented. I’ll cover the actual representation in a bit more detail below.
> The LLVM back-end will be responsible for emitting the CodeView type records from the IR into the output .obj file. Since the type records will already be in the correct format, this is essentially just a copy. No inspection of the type records is necessary within LLVM. The back-end will also be responsible for generating CodeView symbol records, line numbers, and source file info for any functions and data defined in the compilation unit. The back-end is the logical place to do this because only the back-end knows the code addresses, data addresses, and stack frame layouts.

Thanks for proposing this.

How different are the type records from the type information we currently have in LLVM's DIType hierarchy? Would it be feasible to move the logic for generating type records from LLVM metadata into the backend? This way a frontend could be agnostic about the debug information format.

-- adrian