VC8-compatible debugging in the works!

[Peter Johnson]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006, Vikas Kumar wrote:
> On 3/21/06, Michael Urman <mu at tortall.net> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
> Does this mean, if I use NASM syntax instead of Gas syntax DWARF2 will
> not be supported ? Not that I need it, for debugging assembly I find
> it best to use various features of gdb rather than anything else... In
> any case there will be a very fine line in defining data vs code ...
> data can be defined anywhere as can code.. or maybe you meant
> compiling a C program and then using yasm instead of Gas to assemble
> it  ?

DWARF supports two use cases:
1) Debug info passthrough (e.g. line numbers as given by a C compiler)
2) Debug info generation (line numbers from assembly source file)

#1 is only currently supported in GAS syntax (mostly due to lack of a 
couple of lines of code in the NASM parser), and yes, the main intention 
of such support is for compiler backends.

#2, on the other hand, is supported in *both* NASM and GAS syntaxes.

In short, Yasm *will* generate DWARF2 assembly source line numbers for all 
code sections; just specify "-g dwarf2" on the Yasm command line to enable 
generation.  Then you can enjoy source-level assembly debugging in gdb :).

The only feature still somewhat missing is the ability to add hints to 
generate additional debug information, like marking certain labels as 
functions, marking data in certain ways, etc.

Peter