[fpc-devel] Playing with archer using mingw, and dwarf2/3

[Joost van der Sluis]

Op zaterdag 16-05-2009 om 22:55 uur [tijdzone +0200], schreef Jonas
Maebe:
> On 16 May 2009, at 22:22, Joost van der Sluis wrote:
> 
> > I've finally succeeded in buildin gdb-archer on windows using mingw.
> 
> Which branch did you build? "archer"? If you built "master" instead:  
> that's just regular gdb cvs imported in git (used for keeping all the  
> different branches in sync with gdb cvs), so in that case it's normal  
> that DWARF3 barely works.

I've tried a few. Among them also master, and further mainly the
fedora-merges branche.

It could indeed be the case that the actual dwarf-3 tests were with
master. I'll re-try tomorrow using the fedora-branch. (Or could you
suggest another one? I though this branche would be somewhat stable and
include most things from other branches)

> > I
> > wanted to look how things are working using dwarf-3 debug info.
> >
> > Jonas, are there any things I could try using dwarf-3 which should not
> > work using dwarf-2/stabs? Or somehing I really need Archer for?
> 
> You should be able to print dynamic arrays and ansistrings with it  
> using the regular "print" command.
> 
> > There are quite a few things that don't work using -gw3, though. Like
> > evaluating simple (local) variables.
> 
> That worked for me when I last tried it (that was a while ago though).  
> But in general it's barely tested. There's a bunch of DWARF2 stuff  
> that's overridden by DWARF3 methods (from before I ever touched  
> dbgdwarf.pas), and most of the corresponding DWARF2 code has been  
> significantly fixed/altered since then (e.g., debug info for classes  
> and objects). So it's quite expected that currently several things  
> work worse with DWARF3 than with DWARF2.

You indeed already mentioned that earlier.

> > Shall I try to make simple examples and file bug-reports?
> 
> You can, but I don't know if it's very useful at this point. No one  
> has even started testing and debugging it.

We need something to start.

> > Is -gw3
> > supposed to work on windows at all? (Yuri?)
> 
> There is no difference in how DWARF2 and DWARF3 are encoded at the  
> assembler/object file level.

Ok, good to know.

Joost.