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[PATCH] Add a comment briefly explaining partial symbols
- From: "Christian Biesinger via gdb-patches" <gdb-patches at sourceware dot org>
- To: gdb-patches at sourceware dot org
- Cc: Christian Biesinger <cbiesinger at google dot com>
- Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 17:12:52 -0500
- Subject: [PATCH] Add a comment briefly explaining partial symbols
- Reply-to: Christian Biesinger <cbiesinger at google dot com>
Based on an explanation by tromey on IRC.
gdb/ChangeLog:
2019-07-31 Christian Biesinger <cbiesinger@google.com>
* objfiles.h (objfile): Add a comment describing partial symbols.
---
gdb/objfiles.h | 8 +++++++-
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/gdb/objfiles.h b/gdb/objfiles.h
index a0c106be3d..c7e0be1955 100644
--- a/gdb/objfiles.h
+++ b/gdb/objfiles.h
@@ -382,7 +382,13 @@ private:
2. Additional symbol files added by the add-symbol-file command,
3. Shared library objfiles, added by ADD_SOLIB, 4. symbol files
for modules that were loaded when GDB attached to a remote system
- (see remote-vx.c). */
+ (see remote-vx.c).
+
+ GDB typically reads symbols twice -- first an initial scan which just
+ reads "partial symbols"; these are partial information for the
+ static/global symbols in a symbol file. When later looking up symbols,
+ objfile->sf->qf->lookup_symbol is used to check if we only have a partial
+ symbol and if so, read and expand the full compunit. */
struct objfile
{
--
2.22.0.709.g102302147b-goog