Re: patch to improve i386 epilogue (version 4)

[Jeffrey A Law <law at cygnus dot com>]

  In message <199810100107.SAA26162@smtp.earthlink.net>you write:

  > It's not the fact that -g generates stabs per se that is
  > inconsistent.  It is the fact that -g generates stabs while -ggdb
  > generates DWARF2 that is odd.  They should, IMO, generate the same
  > thing, since GDB is the native debugger.
?!?  Really?  Yea, I'd call that inconsistent.

  > In other words, on some system X you might use -g to get debug
  > information to use with the vendor debugger, and -ggdb to get debug
  > information to use with GDB.  But, on Linux/GNU you never face this
  > conundrum, so why should the switches do different things?
I'd tend to agree.

Can anyone explain why this braindamage exists on Linux.  This sounds totally
dumb to me.

  >     Jeffrey> I can see the *potential* for improvements using the
  >     Jeffrey> dwarf2 format, but at the current time neither gcc nor
  >     Jeffrey> gdb are set up to take advantage of the richer debug
  >     Jeffrey> format provided by dwarf2 (in some cases the debugger
  >     Jeffrey> needs updating, in others the compiler, in a few, both).
  > 
  > That's a good argument.  I have no knowledge as to the current state
  > of the debugger or debug-generation code; my impression was that
  > DWARF2 support was reasonably mature.  (After all, we use it on at
  > least some systems where that is the vendor default format.)
It's mature enough to basically work.  But things like having gdb read the
frame descriptors, or having gcc emit ranges and gdb grok the ranges haven't
been implemented yet.

jeff