[Info-vax] ada archives and debug

[Tristan Gingold]

johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk writes:

> On Saturday, 20 January 2018 07:13:16 UTC, Tristan Gingold  wrote:
> The other thing I might mention while you're here 
> relates to John Reagan's recent comment that 
> DWARF is DWARF.

Yes, DWARF is DWARF and DWARF is complex.
There are many DWARF constructs (like locations list) that
aren't handled by VMS DEBUG.

It was still possible to debug Ada compiled by gcc 4.7 on VMS
but the experience wasn't great.

Using a cross-gdb for VMS is the simplest solution from a tool
point of view, but then support for multiple language is not
that great.

> For example back then there would be some 'spurious' 
> symbols in the DWARF-from-Ada which were existing symbol
> names which had been mangled to encode various attributes 
> which couldn't have been done in DWARF's predecessor, STABs.

True.

> The attribute encoding (array bounds etc?) could often 
> have been done in pure DWARF without the manglecoding.

True.

> Without a magic decoder ring or years of reverse 
> engineering, these manglecoded things were a hindrance 
> rather than a help for my needs at the time (which, 
> strangely enough, related to debug and test tools), and 
> the readily availabe source for bits of gdb and gcc/gnat 
> wasn't all that helpful to me.
>
> So, back to John Reagan's comment: for the current 
> implementation, is a magic decoder ring still needed, 
> or is pure DWARF pretty much sufficient?

You should now have a decent experience with pure DWARF.