Re: ld error message %C format

[Alan Modra <amodra at gmail dot com>]

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 04:59:07PM -0700, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> Alan Modra <amodra@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > How do people feel about extending typical linker error messages like
> > the following
> > 	tmpdir/dump0.o: In function `foo':
> > 	./compressed1.c:13: undefined reference to `bar'
> > to always include the section and offset information?
> > 	tmpdir/dump0.o: In function `foo':
> > 	./compressed1.c:13:(.text+0x8): undefined reference to `bar'
> >
> > When debugging toolchain problems, the section and offset is often
> > more useful than the source information.  I've checked that this
> > change doesn't seem to break emacs parsing of error messages.
> 
> While I'm generally not happy about adding options, I think this is a
> case where we should consider it.  That is, consider an option
> requesting more verbose information from linker errors.  I think that
> for ordinary users of the linker, i.e., 99.9% of linker users, the
> section+offset will be far more confusing than helpful.

Perhaps I should give some more background as to why I'd like to make
this change.  Current uses of %C are
- multiple definition error
- warning symbol call-back
- undefined symbol error
- reloc overflow/dangerous/unattached errors
- cross reference error
- one use in each of pe.em, pep.em, pe-dll.c
- two uses in each of elf64-ppc.c, elf32-ppc.c, elf32-sh.c

I'd say that some of these existing uses of %C would benefit from the
extra information, particularly the reloc and cross ref errors.  Also,
it's not as if emitting section+offset is entirely new:  You get that
for all of these errors if debug info is missing.  However, the main
reason I want the section+offset is for replacing uses of
_bfd_error_handler with info->callbacks->einfo in BFD back-end linker
support functions.  Some of these already report section+offset.  I
don't like to idea of removing information..

einfo is attractive for the source function and line info, and %v for
offset doesn't truncate like %lx for 32-bit host, 64-bit target.

-- 
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM