Re: Forgot to note

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

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. :-)

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.

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.

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

Stan