Re: macros, debug information, and parse_macro_definition

Andrew Cagney
2003-04-29T14:55:59Z

>
> These encodings are simple enough that I wouldn't expect them to
> change over time.
>
> I would think it more likely that there would be a bug, either in
> gcc's encoding of them or in gdb's processing of them. And if the
> code is duplicated, then both locations need to be modified to fix the
> bug -- with the attendant risk that someone will modify one and forget
> to modify the other. Or will modify it, but accidentally make it
> slightly different.

> I don't know how people would feel about having STABS have a
> description of the encoding combined with a caveat that the DWARF
> 2.0.0 spec is authoritative. I would certainly prefer that the STABS
> document remain self contained.

I think this is a good strategy. It's already a ``gcc extension'', and
stealing an existing (known to be working) spec is always a good
strategy :-)

Have you thought about link time information compression? One of the
complaints leveled at the macro stuff is the size of the resultant debug
info.

Andrew