Designs for better debug info in GCC

[Joe Buck]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2007 at 11:11:46PM -0200, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> Line number information has a well-defined meaning: it ought to
> represent the source code line that best represents the source-code
> construct that ended up implemented using that instruction.

You implicitly assume that souch a source code line exists.
Consider something like

int func(bool cond, int a, int b, int c)
{
  int out;
  if (cond)
    out = a + b;
  else
    out = a + b + c;
  return out;
}

The optimizer might produce something that structurally resembles

  out = a + b;
  if (!cond)
    out += c;
  return out;

If you set a breakpoint on the addition of a and b, it will trigger
regardless of the value of cond.  Furthermore, there isn't a place
to put a breakpoint that will trigger only for the case where cond
is true, as you can on unoptimized code.  So you need to choose
between natural debugging and optimization.