Re: Forgot to note

[Daniel Berlin <dberlin at redhat dot com>]

Stan Shebs <shebs@apple.com> writes:

> Daniel Berlin wrote:
> > 
> > Currently, the consensus on gcc seems to be that linux should move to
> > dwarf2 before 3.0 releases, which would mean that stopping support for
> > new-abi/stabs would also be an option.
> 
> I Don't Think So...
> 
> > DWARF2 will work fine with either ABI automatically.
> > 
> > What should we do?
> > Not support new-abi/stabs?
> > Not support old-abi/stabs?
> > Support both? (this is a not insignificant amount of work).
> 
> Guess what, you're going to have to work harder. :-)


Not necessarily me, it depends on my schedule.
It may end up  that i won't have time to add support for new-abi/stabs
anytime soon.
> The only valid rationale for skipping new-abi/stabs support was if
> GCC itself was no longer going to support stabs with the new ABI.
> I haven't heard that that was going to happen, and it seems
> implausible anyway because of the magnitude of the disruption.
> 
Right.

> As a transition strategy it would be acceptable to work up
> placeholders in stabs support so that we can add stuff incrementally.
> For instance, Apple may or may not be moving off stabs in the
> GCC 3.0 timeframe, so we may be motivated to do some of the actual
> new-abi/stabs work.

Hey, that'd be nice.

> 
> Even under an optimistic dwarf2 adoption scenario (dwarf2 still
> hasn't been standardized for one thing, although it's getting
> close),

That's not really fair to say.
1. Dwarf2 *has* been adopted. Compilers either use it (most), or plan
on using it.
Nobody plans on using something else in the future, AFAIK.
2. It wasn't "officially" standardized because the sponsor went broke.
There is a draft standard, and this is what people use.
Mike eager also is driving the 2.1 standard.

< the stabs format is going to be with us for at least another
> five years, so you should plan your hacking so that you can live with
> the stabs reader for that long.
> 
It's not the stabs reader i'm worried about.
It's all the crufty stupidity specifically related to C++/stabs that
is going to break.

Just wanted to see if I could remove it yet, but apparently not.
I certainly don't want to add to it, but it appears i'm going to have
to.


> Stan