DWARF read

[Ian Lance Taylor]

   From: hjl@varesearch.com (H.J. Lu)
   Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 11:43:18 -0800 (PST)

   I noticed that there is no DWARF read in BFD. As the result, one ld
   test failed on Solaris/x86:

   gcc -g -I/net/shanghai/local/work/gnu/src/binutils/ld/testsuite/ld-undefined -c -O2 -g /net/shanghai/local/work/gnu/src/binutils/ld/testsuite/ld-undefined/undefined.c
   -o tmpdir/undefined.o
   /export/home/hjl/build/gnu/bin/binutils/ld/ld-new -e start -o tmpdir/undefined
   tmpdir/undefined.o
   ld-new: warning: cannot find entry symbol start; defaulting to 08048074
   tmpdir/undefined.o: In function `function':
   tmpdir/undefined.o(.text+0x4): undefined reference to `this_function_is_not_defined'
   PASS: undefined
   PASS: undefined function
   FAIL: undefined line

   However, gdb knows how to read DWARF. Shouldn't it be moved to BFD so
   that other problems can access DWARF also?

What vintage sources are you using?  Gavin Romig-Koch added DWARF 2
debug reading to BFD in December 1997, and he added DWARF 1 in October
1998.  Solaris/x86 almost certainly uses DWARF 1.  If you are getting
the above error from recent sources, then there is a bug somewhere.

The gdb debug format parsing code is not in BFD for any format.  The
handling of debugging information is central to gdb, and it's never
seemed useful to provide the complex gdb handling to any other
program.  BFD has much simpler and less efficient versions of
debugging information handling.

Ian