Re: stabs vs. dwarf-2 for C programs

[John Haller <jhaller@lucent.com>]

Daniel Berlin wrote:

> The pre-linker pass is on my list of things to do, after all the
> optimized code debugging support and finishing the work on the new
> register allocator for gcc.

The native Sun Solaris linker takes an interesting approach
to eliminating duplicate debugging information.  It does
not copy much debug information from the original object
module to the final linked product, just enough to identify
which original object contains the debugging information.
The debugger then needs to locate the original object module
when setting breakpoints or looking up symbol information.
The only downside is that this prevents much symbolic debugging
if the original built objects aren't around.  It can also
speed the link not only by not having to rewrite symbolic
debug information, but also by not having to read it in the
original objects.  It also speeds up starting the debugger,
as the debugger no longer has to read the entire symbol table
at startup.

I'm glad to see other people looking at this, because in
my spare time it could take years to work on this myself.
-- 
John Haller jhaller@lucent.com