(Resent, now actually subscribed to the list from the correct address)
On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 14:28 +0530, M. Mohan Kumar wrote:
That's all true in the abstract, but modern gcc has been known to
abscond with variable location data even for values that are
live/recomputable. This is the main reason why the VTA (and
debuglocus and other) gcc projects are under way -- to represent the
maximum possible conceptual data, despite -O2 etc.
Frank, Will VTA/debuglocus have the dwarf compatibility (i.e. it does not
need modification to existing applications using libdwarf APIs)?
When can we expect this features (VTA/debuglocus) integrated into mainline
gcc?
Yes, it will output (hopefully better/more complete) dwarf information.
I don't know the schedule details of when this will land in gcc
mainline. But the ideas behind how to improve the tracking of debug
locations for variables in gcc can be found in this paper from Alexandre
Olivia: http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/papers/vta/slides.pdf
And on this GCC wiki page:
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Var_Tracking_Assignments