Re: Binary Compatibility: debug info for compiled Java programs

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 02:16:44PM +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
> Daniel Jacobowitz writes:
>  > 
>  > I'm not familiar with the BC ABI (and missed the talk); could you give
>  > me an example of what information you have at compile time and what you
>  > generate at runtime?
> 
> All structures are laid out at runtime.
> 
> http://people.redhat.com/lockhart/.gcc04/MasterGCC-2side.pdf  Page 169.

So: the list of members, the inheritance tree, et cetera is static at
compile time; for their locations you have runtime tables.

>  > I suspect that a fourth solution is possible: gcj generating DWARF
>  > which describes how to read the metadata.  It may not be very
>  > efficient, though, and it will still require a certain amount of
>  > playing with GDB.
> 
> Yeah, that was suggested as well.  I forgot to mention it.  I don't
> know if this is possible in DWARF data: don't member offsets have to
> be constants?
> 
> I must admit I like this idea least of all!  Maybe I subconsciously
> suppressed the memory.

Could you explain what you don't like about it?

Member offsets definitely don't have to be constant.  In fact, from the
spec:
  For a C++ virtual base, the data member location attribute will
  usually consist of a non-trivial location expression.
The way C++ handles virtual bases is similar enough in execution that
the same thing will work here.  For a member it would look like:

  # Base location of the class is on the stack
  DW_OP_addr <otable location>
  DW_OP_constu <otable offset>
  DW_OP_plus
  DW_OP_deref (or DW_OP_deref_size <size of atable entry>)
  DW_OP_plus



-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz