https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=82542
Eric Gallager <egallager at gcc dot gnu.org> changed:
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CC| |egallager at gcc dot gnu.org
--- Comment #8 from Eric Gallager <egallager at gcc dot gnu.org> ---
(In reply to Ben Longbons from comment #7)
> I saw that mailing list post, but it only explains *what*, not *why*.
>
> I never really gave consideration to DWARF, since in my little experience it
> is very unportable for a "standard". I suppose I could investigate it more,
> but ... that would require a very significant code change (since DWARF has a
> completely different mindset), and I don't even know if *all* the
> interesting trees survive that long (one of my long-term goals is to allow
> using C++ templates).
>
> Also, bugs that get filed against GCC's DWARF support tend to just go
> unfixed forever (I've filed at least 3 of them).
Do you have bug numbers / links for the 3 DWARF bugs?
>
> The only real infelicity I've found in the TU dump *format* (after the
> high/low integers went away) is that strings aren't quoted, but that only
> becomes a problem if " lngt: MM\n@NNNN" occurs in the string with
> appropriate integers MM and NNNN. (There is also a bug I filed about wide
> strings not dumping).
I recognize that one; it's bug 71996
>
> I certainly wouldn't complain if it was replaced with an XML-based format
> with the same general structure (don't try to make it nice, keep it raw) -
> parsing is the easiest part of tooling.
>
> Finally - even if GCC's internal tree layout is *theoretically* unstable -
> any such changes will cause more problems for people working on the compiler
> itself, and in practice have always been trivial to update for.
