Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: gnu.gdb.bug Subject: Re: gdb 'bugs' (enhancement requests?) and a patch... Summary: You could put extra COFF debug information in a section... Message-ID: <1658@aber-cs.UUCP> Date: 22 Feb 90 14:53:33 GMT Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Distribution: gnu Organization: Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth (Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal) Lines: 24 In article meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) writes: When I worked at Data General, I maintained that the "C" in COFF meant crippled, and not common, mostly because of the limitations of the debug format. We have already discussed some of this in the G++ groups, because the problem is much worse for it. I think that, waiting for ELF, COFF can still be used if oen is prepared to do a hack similar to that used for the AOUT format. In AOUT the debugging information is emitted as simple strings, and the native AOUT debug format is practically bypassed. In COFF you could easily (very easily) use a section to hold debug tables in whatever format. This section could be something like the .comment section that is already customary with COFF executables (and that often munches up a lot of space in them -- use 'mcs -d' as well as 'strip' ...). I actually feel that using the .comment section would be fine. Any volunteers? E.g. from vendors like DELL that sell System V based systems... -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk