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Skipping over trampolines/stubs
- From: Jonas Maebe <jonas dot maebe at elis dot ugent dot be>
- To: gdb at sourceware dot org
- Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 21:08:11 +0200
- Subject: Skipping over trampolines/stubs
Hi,
We have a language construct whereby some calls have to be rerouted
via a small stubs/trampolines. When encountering such a stub, gdb
currently does not step into them, because the have no line info
available (and hence gdb also does not step into the target call
unless you manually place a breakpoint at the destination).
When the stub is generated in the same source file as where its
destination lies, I can easily generate the same source info for the
stub as for the target code, and then everything works fine (at least
with DWARF; stabs would also require a fake procedure body, at least
on Mac OS X).
The problem is if the target code is located in a different source
file. I think I can hack our compiler so it can figure out whether
that other source file was compiled with debug information and if so,
what the file/line information of the source file of the target code
would be, but
it wouldn't be easy and kind of messy.
So I'm wondering whether there's maybe some trick that you can use to
make gdb step through arbitrary stubs somehow (maybe some kind of fake
line information that it always ignores and just skips over), or
whether there is another possible approach.
Thanks,
Jonas
PS, the actual implementation details: it's in case of interfaces in
Free Pascal (similar to Java interfaces). When you call an interface
method using a class instance, the self pointer needs to be adjusted
before the interface method is entered (it has to be changed so it
points to the interface's vmt). This is done using a small stub, to
avoid having to inline this code everywhere (it's kind of bulky in
some cases).
These stubs have to be generated in the source files containing the
implementations of classes that implements an interface and not in the
source file of the interface itself, because the adjustment of the
self pointer depends on the class (depending on how many interfaces it
implements, and in which order).
Here are a couple of examples of such stubs (the first for a function
using the stdcall calling convention, the second for one using the
Borland-style fastcall calling convention):
.globl _WRPR_P$PROGRAM_TMYCLASS_$_IINTERFACE_$_0_
$__SYSTEM_TINTERFACEDOBJECT_$__QUERYINTERFACE$TGUID$formal$$LONGINT
_WRPR_P$PROGRAM_TMYCLASS_$_IINTERFACE_$_0_$__SYSTEM_TINTERFACEDOBJECT_
$__QUERYINTERFACE$TGUID$formal$$LONGINT:
subl $12,4(%esp)
jmp L_SYSTEM_TINTERFACEDOBJECT_$__QUERYINTERFACE$TGUID
$formal$$LONGINT$stub
.globl _WRPR_P$PROGRAM_TMYCLASS_$_IINTERFACE_$_3_$__P
$PROGRAM_TMYCLASS_$__MYDO
_WRPR_P$PROGRAM_TMYCLASS_$_IINTERFACE_$_3_$__P$PROGRAM_TMYCLASS_$__MYDO:
subl $12,%eax
pushl %ebx
pushl %eax
movl (%eax),%eax
movl 80(%eax),%eax
movl %eax,4(%esp)
popl %eax
ret