VC8-compatible debugging in the works!

[Michael Urman]

On Tue, Mar 21, 2006 at 09:17:12AM -0500, Vikas Kumar wrote:
> this is great work Peter and Michael. Is this debugging support only
> for VC8 ? Does it already exist for Linux ? Do you really create
> DWARF2 symbols when I assemble a code using yasm  ? Maybe i should do
> a dwarfdump and check...

See yasm -g help for a list of supported formats, but the trick is what
exactly they support.  AFAIK right now stabs only supports some minimal
guesses, labeling source files and lines as well as functions and
text-segment variables.  It does not support pass-through from gcc, nor
gathering any other information from the user, so its primary use is
line and function information.

Dwarf2 support is primarily for gas-parser gcc pass-through at this
point; I'm not sure if it guesses variables and/or functions, but it
will generate line information even when pass-through is unavailable.
This is definitely the format of choice for elf output down the road.

VC8 CodeView support is in the works but I don't think anything is
checked in yet - it's totally on Peter's plate so far.

Clearly that's some wide disparity in what's currently supported, and
we'd like to make some design decisions before we end up with three
debug formats with wildly different needs and capabilities.  I think it
would be ideal to come up with a unified high level representation so I
can assemble -f elf -g dwarf2, or -f win32 -g vc8, and get equivalent
information in either without having to change my assembly code.

Michael
-- 
Michael Urman  [- mu at tortall.net -]