[GCC Wiki] Update of "DebugFission" by CaryCoutant

[Thomas Schwinge]

Hi Cary!

On Thu, 16 May 2013 16:58:12 -0000, GCC Wiki <noreply@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> The "DebugFission" page has been changed by CaryCoutant:
> http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission?action=diff&rev1=18&rev2=19
> 
>   = DWARF Extensions for Separate Debug Information Files =
>   
>   Updated January 24, 2013
> + 
> + The "Fission" project was started in response to the problems caused by huge amounts of debug information in large applications. By splitting the debug information into two parts at compile time -- one part that remains in the .o file and another part that is written to a parallel .dwo ("DWARF object") file -- we can reduce the total size of the object files processed by the linker.

Yay, a quite noticeable link-time speedup!  \o/

> + Fission is implemented in GCC 4.7, and requires support from recent versions of objcopy and the gold linker.

Is my understanding correct that the gold linker is not actually a
requirement -- at least nowadays?  In my (very limited, so far) testing,
this also seems to work with ld.bfd.  (I do see objcopy's --extract-dwo
and --split-dwo options being used in gcc/gcc.c:ASM_FINAL_SPEC, so I
suspect that's what "recent versions of objcopy" hints at?)

> + Use the {{{-gsplit-dwarf}}} option to enable the generation of split DWARF at compile time. This option must be used in conjunction with {{{-c}}}; Fission cannot be used when compiling and linking in the same step.

According to the following -- admittedly very minimal -- testing, this is
not actually (no longer?) true?

    $ [gcc] [...] -gsplit-dwarf
    $ ls *.dwo
    ccF9JYjE.dwo  subroutines.dwo
    $ gdb -q a.out 
    Reading symbols from a.out...done.
    (gdb) list main
    [...]
    (gdb) quit
    $ rm *.dwo
    $ gdb -q a.out 
    Reading symbols from a.out...
    warning: Could not find DWO CU subroutines.dwo(0x2d85cdd539df6900) referenced by CU at offset 0x0 [in module [...]/a.out]
    
    warning: Could not find DWO CU ccF9JYjE.dwo(0xa6936555a636518) referenced by CU at offset 0x35 [in module [...]/a.out]
    done.
    (gdb) list main
    warning: Could not find DWO CU subroutines.dwo(0x2d85cdd539df6900) referenced by CU at offset 0x0 [in module [...]/a.out]

Have I been testing the wrong thing?

> + Use the gold linker's {{{--gdb-index}}} option ({{{-Wl,--gdb-index}}} when linking with gcc or g++) at link time to create the .gdb_index section that allows GDB to locate and read the .dwo files as it needs them.

Unless told otherwise, I'll re-word that to the effect that gold, and
usage of its --gdb-index option are optional.


Grüße
 Thomas
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