Designs for better debug info in GCC

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> writes:

> [...]
>> 	Who is "we"?  What better debugging are GCC users demanding?  What
>> debugging difficulties are they experiencing?  Who is that set of users?
>> What functional changes would improve those cases?  What is the cost of
>> those improvements in complexity, maintainability, compile time, object
>> file size, GDB start-up time, etc.?
>
> That's what I'm asking.  First and foremost, I want to know what,
> concretely, Alexandre is trying to achieve, beyond "better debugging
> info for optimized code".  Until we understand that, I don't see how we
> can sensibly debate any methods of implementation, possible costs, etc.

It may be asking to belabour the obvious.  GCC users do not want to
have to compile with "-O0 -g" just to debug during development (or
during crash analysis *after deployment*!).  Developers would like to
be able to place breakpoints anywhere by reference to the source code,
and would like to access any variables logically present there.
Developers will accept that optimized code will by its nature make
some of these fuzzy, but incorrect data must be and incomplete data
should be minimized.

That they put up with the status quo at all is a historical artifact
of being told so long not to expect any better.

- FChE