[fpc-devel] Re: Debugger for FPC

[Jonas Maebe]

On 11 Mar 2009, at 15:12, Jonas Maebe wrote:

> It may even be quite challenging to generate debug information for  
> something like that with Stabs. For DWARF, it seems there is some  
> code that generates debug information in some cases, but only for  
> "var a: type absolute b;"-style expressions (although I can't even  
> trigger that at first sight).
>
> With DWARF3, this should also be quite doable.

It turned out that DWARF2 was enough, so the implementation should  
already work with currently released GDB versions (see http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=13313 
  for some caveats).

And in fact, the same can be done to generate for properties that  
directly map to variables/fields. Just one question: what should the  
debug information point the debugger to in case of
a) a property without a read specifier, but with a write specifier  
going directly to a field? Nothing, or that field?
b) a property with a read specifier that is a function call, but with  
a write specifier directly going to a field? Nothing, or that field?  
(as long as we do not support encoding property accessor function  
calls into the debug information, and/or when we do but determine that  
the accessor can have side effects)


Jonas