Re: stabs and macro information

[David Taylor <dtaylor at emc dot com>]

> Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 13:27:04 -0400
> From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow at mvista dot com>
> 
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 11:58:19AM -0400, David Taylor wrote:
> > Currently, when invoked with -gdwarf-2 -g3, gcc will record macro
> > information in a .debug_macinfo elf section.  And when presented with
> > an executable containing macro information in a .debug_macinfo
> > section, gdb will make use of it.
> > 
> > Many companies, including EMC, still use stabs.  So...  it would be
> > nice if the same was true of stabs.
> 
> A more interesting question, to me, is why EMC still needs to use
> stabs.  They are an inferior debug format, extremely hard to parse or
> extend.

EMC does some processing of stabs via in house tools.  I'm told that
at one point before I started here that they switched to dwarf for a
bit.  And that the dwarf that was generated by GCC (and hence had to
be handled by the local tools) changed a few times...  They got tired
of having to modify the in house tools, so they switched back to
stabs.

>          GCC's and GDB's current implementations of DWARF-2 (and 3) are
> somewhat lacking, but it's all fixable.

I imagine we will eventually switch.  But, as long as the gcc and gdb
dwarf implementations are perceived as 'somewhat lacking', it's harder
to make the case to management.