Dwarf 2 Minutes, May 16, 2000

[Michael Eager <eager at eagercon dot com>]

Issue discussion:

000403.3	Statement prolog header

	This is editorial, and is intended to make names consistent.  Approved.


000405.1	Global Types section

	The purpose of this proposal appears to be to make for faster lookup 
	of global types in C++.  A similar feature was added to SGI's compiler
	but is not being used by the debugger.  The proposal does not address
	template types.  

	It was felt that there were other satisfactory ways to look up types
	and there was no prior art which demonstrated the benefits of this
	this change.  This proposal deferred for further explanation and
	justification.  

000410.1	FORM_ref_addr

	Withdrawn by proposer in favor of 000410.3.

000410.3	Add aliases "loclist", "lineptr", "macptr"

	This proposal adds aliases to the description of the constant values
	described in section 7.5.4.  These serve to clarify the use of the
	constant value, without changing the semantics of the constant values.
	Approved as an editorial change.

000410.2	New FORMs DW_AT_linep, locp, macp

	This proposal would add three new constant forms for addressing the line
	table, location lists, and macros.  It is an incompatible change.
	It was felt that the benefits of this change did not warrant making
	a new, incompatible version of Dwarf 2.

	Withdrawn by proposer.

000428.1	Rename DW_FORM_ref_addr

	The impetus for this proposal was to clarify the meaning of 
	DW_FORM_ref_addr.  The proposed name, DW_FORM_ref_info, didn't appear
	to be any clearer than the current name, nor was any other acceptable
	name proposed.  Rejected.

000428.2	Add DW_ATE_wchar_t

	This proposal was to use wchar_t to describe wide character types in C++.
	It was determined that this was not necessary, that describing a wide
	char as a DW_ATE_(un)signed_char with size of two or four as appropriate.
	(There was a confusion between Dwarf 2 base types, which are abstract
	descriptions of types, and C/C++ types which are described by the base
	types.  wchar_t, int, and char are target language types which are 
	described by the Dwarf 2 base types.)  Withdrawn.


Next meeting:  June 13, 2000.

-- 
Michael Eager	 Eager Consulting     eager@eagercon.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306  650-325-8077