RE: Deprecate dwarf and mdebug support, delete nlm?

Michael Elizabeth Chastain
2003-05-09T15:47:03Z

mec> Are there still a lot of SCO users with gcc 2?
kj> HUGE numbers. It's the currently "officially supported" version
kj> that we give our customers. Until 3.3 we haven't really felt GCC
kj> 3 was ready for primetime. In fact the next "oficially supported"
kj> version will be 3.4.

Okay, that means we have to keep dwarf 1 for another 6-12 months
at least. Rats.

kj> Aside from that ... just as a general guiding light, a debugger
kj> shouldn't be target to a compiler, that's bad practice. It should
kj> take advantage of features of the compiler if it can but it should
kj> be VERY forgiving of things like debug formats (ie support as many
kj> as it can), calling conventions etc.

It's a resource issue. As Andrew Cagney has said, it takes work to keep
all the debug format readers current with the symbol table infrastructure,
and gdb has limited resources available.

Michael C