Bug 28568

Summary: Eliminate redundant DW_AT_entry_pc tags for inlined functions from debuginfo
Product: dwz Reporter: William Cohen <wcohen>
Component: defaultAssignee: Nobody <nobody>
Status: NEW ---    
Severity: enhancement CC: dwz
Priority: P2    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Host: Target:
Build: Last reconfirmed:

Description William Cohen 2021-11-09 13:47:03 UTC
According to the DWARF5.pdf standard DW_AT_entry_pc can be optional "2.18 Entry Address":

If no DW_AT_entry_pc attribute is present, then the entry address is assumed to
be the same as the base address of the containing scope.

Eliminating those unneeded DW_AT_entry_pc attributes would save some space in the generated debuginfo.  To determine the possible saving the following dwgrep (https://pmachata.github.io/dwgrep/) script was used to find how often this occurs in the Fedora 34 kernel and showed over 200,000 instances where the DW_AT_low_pc and DW_AT_entry_pc were the same:


$  dwgrep /usr/lib/debug/lib/modules/5.14.15-200.fc34.x86_64/vmlinux -e '
let A := entry (?TAG_inlined_subroutine) ?DW_AT_low_pc ?DW_AT_entry_pc;
let LOW := ((A ?DW_AT_low_pc @DW_AT_low_pc) || (0xdeadbeef));
let ENTRY := ((A ?DW_AT_entry_pc @DW_AT_entry_pc) || (0xdeadbeef));
(LOW == ENTRY) ([A name, ENTRY, LOW ])' | grep \\[  | wc
 214604  643812 12804153

Initially filed a gcc bug to https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=103134 for the redundant DW_AT_entry_pc. It was suggested that dwz would be likely be able to eliminate these unneeded DW_AT_entry_pc tags in the debuginfo.