[llvm-dev] llvm-pdbdump proposal

[Reid Kleckner via llvm-dev]

This is exactly how clang's type printer works, so I'd say this is probably
the right implementation strategy. :)

Check out clang/lib/AST/TypePrinter.cpp:
  class TypePrinter {
...
    void printBefore(const Type *ty, Qualifiers qs, raw_ostream &OS);
    void printBefore(QualType T, raw_ostream &OS);
    void printAfter(const Type *ty, Qualifiers qs, raw_ostream &OS);
    void printAfter(QualType T, raw_ostream &OS);
...
#define ABSTRACT_TYPE(CLASS, PARENT)
#define TYPE(CLASS, PARENT) \
    void print##CLASS##Before(const CLASS##Type *T, raw_ostream &OS); \
    void print##CLASS##After(const CLASS##Type *T, raw_ostream &OS);
#include "clang/AST/TypeNodes.def"


On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 1:33 PM, Adrian McCarthy via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> I came across a PDB that caused llvm-pdbdump to crash.  I tracked it down
> to a missing overload for a data type in the variable printer.  When I
> tried to provide an implementation, I discovered that there were some bugs
> in the existing overloads and it was easy to come up with combinations of
> types that weren't being dumped right.  I created some test cases and tried
> to fix these problems but realized that there's a limitation to how
> printing the type information is structured.
>
> The cause of the difficulty is the conflict between these two facts:
>
> 1.  C and C++ variable declarations are described inside-out
> 2.  Printing with color requires printing left-to-right
>
> Simple types generally work, because all the type information is on the
> left side, so VariableDumper can just work left-to-right.  To handle more
> complex types (like arrays and function signatures), VariableDumper
> attempts to special case the complex types.  Unfortunately, the special
> cases can't be combined generally (e.g., making an array of pointers to
> functions), so it's always possible to find a new bug by adding an extra
> layer of type information.
>
> I'm proposing a restructure of VariableDumper (PrettyVariableDumper.cpp)
> that I think should allow for pretty-printing of all types and actually
> simplify away most of the special-case code.
>
> The existing approach is to emit the type information for a symbol and
> then the identifier, using recursion as necessary to emit the type
> information of subtypes.  For example, if foo is a pointer to an int, it's
> dumped by first recursively dumping the pointee type (int), then the '*',
> and then the name (foo).  But if bar is a pointer to an array of ints, this
> breaks down.
>
> My proposal is to extend this slightly by having dumpers for the
> "left-side" and the "right-side" of the type information.  The pattern for
> printing a variable them becomes:
>
>     call dumpLeft with the symbol type
>     emit the symbol name
>     call dumpRight with the symbol type
>
> Most of the dumpLeft implementations would be identical to the current
> dump implementations.  The default for a dumpRight implementation would be
> to emit nothing, but for arrays and function signatures, dumpRight would
> print the bracketed array size and argument lists.  This depth-first order
> of the recursion should produce the necessary output in order, which means
> there should be no change to how we stream the output in color.
>
> Any questions, comments, objections?
>
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>
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