Sounds reasonable to me. A few more things that vote for debugger tuning:
- LLDB doesn't like to have DWARF that has a class A that inherits from class B, but only a forward declaration of class B is provided. - LLDB wants the .apple_XXX accelerator tables, GDB wants .debug_pubnames/.debug_pubtypes So it would be great to have a "-debugger" flag that could be specified -debugger=lldb -debugger=gdb Not sure on the option name, but I do like the idea. Greg > On May 1, 2015, at 1:06 PM, Robinson, Paul > <paul_robin...@playstation.sony.com> wrote: > > This is basically a reboot of the previous thread titled > About the "debugger target" > except that "target" was really too strong a term for what I had intended > to use this feature for. "Debugger tuning" is more like it. You don't > need to have read the previous thread, I'll recap here. > > Fundamentally, Clang/LLVM uses DWARF as the specification for the _format_ > of information provided by the compiler to a variety of "consumers," which > primarily means debuggers (but not exclusively). [For a long time it was > the only format supported by LLVM. Lately, Microsoft debug info has started > appearing, but being a less widely used format, the issues that DWARF runs > into aren't a concern for that format. So "debugger tuning" is unlikely > to be an issue for Microsoft debug info.] > > DWARF is a permissive standard, meaning that it does not rigidly require > that source-language construct X must be described using the DWARF > construct Y. Instead, DWARF says something more like, "If you have a > source construct that means something like X, here's a mechanism Y that > you could use to describe it." While this gives compilers a lot of nice > flexibility, it does mean that there's a lot of wiggle room for how a > compiler describes something and in how a debugger interprets that > description. Compilers and debuggers therefore need to do a bit of > negotiation in determining how the debug-info "contract" will work, when > it comes to nitty-gritty details. DWARF itself (the standard, as well > as the committee that owns the standard) refuses to get involved in this > negotiation, referring to all that as "quality of implementation issues." > > It is readily apparent that different debuggers have different ideas > about certain DWARF features, for example whether they are useful or > irrelevant, or whether a certain source construct should be described > this way or that way. As these generally fall into the QOI realm, the > DWARF spec itself is no help, and it comes down to a matter of opinion > about whether "the debugger should just know this" or "the compiler > really ought to just emit it that way." > > Clang/LLVM is in the position of being a compiler that wants to support > several different debuggers, all of which have slightly different ideas > about what they want from the DWARF info for a program. Our first line > of defense of course is the DWARF standard itself, but as we've seen, > that is not a universally definitive reference. > > LLVM already emits DWARF slightly differently for different *targets*; > primarily Darwin, in a few cases PS4. But in at least some cases, the > target is just a (somewhat unreliable) proxy for which *debugger* the > compiler expects to be consuming the DWARF. The most instructive case > is the exact DWARF expression used to describe the location of a thread- > local variable. DWARF v3 defined an operator to find the base address > of the thread-local storage area; however, GDB has never learned to > recognize it. Therefore, for targets where we "know" GDB isn't used, > we can emit the standard operator; for targets where GDB *might* be > used, we need to emit the equivalent (non-standard) GNU operator. > > It would be semantically more meaningful to base decisions like this on > whether we expected the debugger to be X or Y or Z. Therefore I've > proposed (http://reviews.llvm.org/D8506) a "debugger tuning" option that > will make the reasoning behind these choices more obvious, and ultimately > give users a way to control the tuning themselves, when the platform's > default isn't what they want. (I'll have a follow-up patch exposing the > tuning option to the Clang driver.) > > So, what kinds of things should be based on the debugger tuning option? > Are there still things that should be based on the target platform? > Simplest to consider these questions together, because it is often clear > which criterion is important if you consider (a) the same debugger run > on different targets, versus (b) different debuggers running on the same > target. Basically, if the same debugger on different targets wants to > have something a certain way, that's probably a debugger-tuning thing. > And if different debuggers on the same target doesn't mean you should > change how the DWARF looks, that's likely a platform-specific thing. > > The most obvious example of a debugger-tuning consideration is the TLS > operator mentioned above. That's something that GDB insists on having. > (It turns out that the standard operator was defined in DWARF 3, so we > also have to emit the GNU operator if we're producing DWARF 2. Tuning > considerations don't trump what the standard says.) > > Another example would be .debug_pubnames and .debug_pubtypes sections. > Currently these default to omitted for Darwin and PS4, but included > everywhere else. My initial patch for "tuning" changes the PS4 platform > criterion to the SCE debugger predicate; quite likely the "not Darwin" > criterion ought to be "not LLDB" or in other words "on for GDB only." > And having the code actually reflect the correct semantic purpose seems > like an overall goodness. > > An example of a target-dependent feature might be the .debug_aranges > section. As it happens, we don't emit this section by default, because > apparently no debugger finds it useful, although there's a command-line > option (-gdwarf-aranges) for it. But, for PS4 we do want to emit it, > because we have non-debugger tools that find it useful. We haven't yet > done the work to make that change on llvm.org, but it's on the list. > I would conditionalize this on the target, not the debugger, because > the debugger is not why we want to generate the section. > > Okay, so I've been pretty long-winded about all this, can I possibly > codify it all into a reasonably succinct set of guidelines? (which > ought to be committed to the repo somewhere, although whether it's as > a lump of text in a docs webpage or a lump of commentary in some source > file is not clear; opinions welcome.) > > o Emit standard DWARF if possible. > o Omitting standard DWARF features that nobody uses is fine. > (example: DW_AT_sibling) > o Extensions are okay, but think about the circumstances where they > would be useful (versus just wasting space). These are probably a > debugger tuning decision, but might be a target-based decision. > (example: DW_AT_APPLE_* attributes) > o If some debugger can't tolerate some piece of standard DWARF, that's > a missing feature or a bug in the debugger. Accommodating that in > the compiler is a debugger tuning decision. > (example: DW_OP_form_tls_address not understood by GDB) > o If some debugger has no use for some piece of standard DWARF, and > it saves space to omit it, that's a debugger tuning decision. > (example: .debug_pubnames/.debug_pubtypes sections) > o If a debugger wants things a certain way regardless of the target, > that's probably a debugger tuning decision. > o If "system" software on a target (other than the debugger) wants > things a certain way regardless of which debugger you're using, > that's NOT a debugger tuning decision, but a target-based decision. > (example: .debug_aranges section) > > Let me know if this all seems reasonable, and especially if you have > a good idea where to keep the guidelines. > Thanks, > --paulr > > > _______________________________________________ > lldb-dev mailing list > lldb-dev@cs.uiuc.edu > http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev _______________________________________________ lldb-dev mailing list lldb-dev@cs.uiuc.edu http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lldb-dev
