From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 14983 invoked by alias); 3 Jan 2013 16:42:29 -0000 Received: (qmail 14868 invoked by uid 22791); 3 Jan 2013 16:42:26 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-3.7 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_50,DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID,DKIM_VALID_AU,FREEMAIL_FROM,KHOP_RCVD_TRUST,KHOP_THREADED,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW,RCVD_IN_HOSTKARMA_YE X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mail-wi0-f175.google.com (HELO mail-wi0-f175.google.com) (209.85.212.175) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:42:21 +0000 Received: by mail-wi0-f175.google.com with SMTP id hm11so11073207wib.2 for ; Thu, 03 Jan 2013 08:42:20 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.180.39.143 with SMTP id p15mr75971492wik.14.1357231340196; Thu, 03 Jan 2013 08:42:20 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.194.179.130 with HTTP; Thu, 3 Jan 2013 08:42:20 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <12972.1357230104@usendtaylorx2l> References: <12972.1357230104@usendtaylorx2l> Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:42:00 -0000 Message-ID: Subject: Re: stabs support in binutils, gcc, and gdb From: Richard Biener To: David Taylor Cc: binutils@sourceware.org, gcc@gcc.gnu.org, gdb@sourceware.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2013-01/txt/msg00009.txt.bz2 On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 5:21 PM, David Taylor wrote: > What is the status of STABS support? > > I know that there is considerably more activity around DWARF than STABS. > It appears that STABS is largely in maintenance mode. Are there any > plans to deprecate STABS support? If STABS enhancements were made and > posted would they be frowned upon? Or would they be reviewed for > possible inclusion in a future release? > > [We have copyright assignments in place for past and future changes to > BINUTILS, GCC, and GDB -- and it took almost 4 years from start to > finish -- I do not want to ever have to go through that again with the > company lawyers! So, paperwork should not be an issue.] > > I know that DWARF is more expressive than STABS. And if it didn't cause > such an explosion in disk space usage, we would probably have switched > from STABS to DWARF years ago. > > Switching to DWARF causes our build products directory (which contains > *NONE* of the intermediate files) to swell from 1.2 GB to 11.5 GB. > Ouch! The DWARF ELF files are 8-12 times the size of the STABS ELF > files. > > If the DWARF files were, say, a factor of 2 the size of the STABS files, > I could probably sell people on switching to DWARF; but, a factor of 8 > to 12 is too much. The idea was to have a working DWARF -> STABS translator, eventually as part of binutils. Richard. > Thanks. > > David