Re: stabs support in binutils, gcc, and gdb

David Edelsohn
2013-01-03T20:53:23Z

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 12:02 PM, Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "David" == David Taylor <dtaylor@emc.com> writes:
>
> David> It appears that STABS is largely in maintenance mode. Are there any
> David> plans to deprecate STABS support? If STABS enhancements were made and
> David> posted would they be frowned upon? Or would they be reviewed for
> David> possible inclusion in a future release?
>
> In gdb things are rarely pre-emptively deprecated like this.
> If someone wants to maintain the stabs code, then it will stay alive.
> The most important thing is having a reasonably responsive maintainer --
> it is the un-maintained code that tends to slowly rot and then
> eventually be deleted.

AIX still uses STABS. GCC produces it and GDB consumes it.

Recent releases of AIX now support DWARF as well, but GCC and GDB have
not been converted to use it on AIX.

- David