[RFC][debug] Add -fadd-debug-nops

Tom de Vries tdevries@suse.de
Mon Jul 16 14:32:00 GMT 2018


On 07/16/2018 03:34 PM, Jakub Jelinek wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 03:29:10PM +0200, Tom de Vries wrote:
>> this is an idea that I'm currently playing around with: adding nops in
>> an optimized application with debug info can improve the debug info.
>>
>> Consider f.i. this gdb session in foo of pr54200-2.c (using -Os):
>> ...
>> (gdb) n
>> 26            return a; /* { dg-final { gdb-test . "(int)a" "6" } } */
>> (gdb) p a
>> 'a' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
>> (gdb) n
>> main () at pr54200-2.c:34
>> 34        return 0;
>> ...
>>
>> The problem is that the scope in which a is declared ends at .LBE7, and the
>> statement .loc for line 26 ends up attached to the ret insn:
>> ...
>>         .loc 1 24 11
>>         addl    %edx, %eax
>> .LVL1:
>>         # DEBUG a => ax
>>         .loc 1 26 7 is_stmt 1
>> .LBE7:
>>         .loc 1 28 1 is_stmt 0
>>         ret
>>         .cfi_endproc
>> ...
>>
>> This patch fixes the problem (for Og and Os, the 'DEBUG a => ax' is missing
>> for O1 and higher) by adding a nop before the ret insn:
>> ...
>>         .loc 1 24 11
>>         addl    %edx, %eax
>>  .LVL1:
>>         # DEBUG a => ax
>>         .loc 1 26 7 is_stmt 1
>> +       nop
>>  .LBE7:
>>         .loc 1 28 1 is_stmt 0
>>         ret
>>         .cfi_endproc
>> ...
>>
>> and instead we have:
>> ...
>> (gdb) n
>> 26            return a; /* { dg-final { gdb-test . "(int)a" "6" } } */
>> (gdb) p a
>> $1 = 6
>> (gdb) n
>> main () at pr54200-2.c:34
>> 34        return 0;
>> ...
>>
>> Any comments?
> 
> So is this essentially a workaround for GDB not supporting the statement
> frontiers?

AFAIU now, the concept of location views addresses this problem, so yes.

> Isn't the right fix just to add that support instead and then
> users can choose how exactly they want to step through the function in the
> debugger.

Right, but in the mean time I don't mind having an option that lets me
filter out noise in guality test results.

Thanks,
- Tom



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