stabs support in binutils, gcc, and gdb

[nick clifton]

Hi David,

> What is the status of STABS support?

Essentially it is in maintenance mode.  But this is due to lack of 
developers interested in extending STABS support, rather than a policy 
of maintenance-only.


> Are there any plans to deprecate STABS support?

No, none.


> If STABS enhancements were made and
> posted would they be frowned upon?  Or would they be reviewed for
> possible inclusion in a future release?

No, they would be reviewed and, assuming that they are suitable, they 
would be accepted for inclusion in future releases.


> Switching to DWARF causes our build products directory (which contains
> *NONE* of the intermediate files) to swell from 1.2 GB to 11.5 GB.
> Ouch!  The DWARF ELF files are 8-12 times the size of the STABS ELF
> files.
>
> If the DWARF files were, say, a factor of 2 the size of the STABS files,
> I could probably sell people on switching to DWARF; but, a factor of 8
> to 12 is too much.

Have you tried using a DWARF compression tool like dwz ?

   http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2012-04/msg00686.html

Or maybe the --compress-debug-sections option to objcopy ?

Cheers
   Nick