Minutes, Dwarf 2 Meeting - December 7, 1999

Issue discussion:

991110.1     Namespaces
    It was generally felt that this proposal needed elaboration.
    There was extensive discussion of namespaces, their complexity, and
    how they might be described. Questions were raised about whether a
    namespace was a scope, and whether it needed to be described at all.
    A compiler resolves references to symbols using namespace and other
    information. These symbols are fully resolved in Dwarf.
    Describing namespaces in Dwarf would allow a debugger to resolve
    references to symbols which were not referenced in the compiled code.
    This raised a concern that the debugger would have to resolve names
    identically to the compiler, which may be problematic.

    Jason Merrill will send an example of describing a namespace using
    this proposal. Rajiv & Bevin also indicated that they would send
    comments and/or alternative descriptions.

991129.1     Pubnames interpretation
    The Dwarf spec uses Compilation Unit Entry in several places, notably
    6.1.1 and 6.1.2, in ways which are open to different interpretations.
    After discussion, it was decided that this is an editorial issue and
    does not require any change to the Dwarf definition. Wherever there
    is a reference to the offset from a Compilation Unit Entry the intent
    is that this be the offset from start of the Compilation Unit Header.
    The wording should be clarified, perhaps to define a Compilation Unit
    as the Header followed by the DIEs for the CU.

991026.5     Register overloading
    Withdrawn. Unclear who raised this issue, or what was intended.

991108.10     Array bounds
    Dwarf uses the Subrange type for two purposes: to describe range
    values (such as in Pascal) and to describe array ranges. The
    specification says that if either bound is missing, the value is
    a language-specific constant.  This appears to be reasonable for
    the use as an integer range or arrays where the size is known, but
    not for arrays where the dimensions are unknown.  The comment in
    5.10 (which is explanatory and not part of the specification)
    suggests that no default is provided for C/C++ for the upper bound.
    This makes describing arrays where the upper array bound is not
    known unclear, since no constant upper bound would be appropriate.
    It was decided that rewording the comment in this section, as well
    as possibly adding a comment in 5.4 describing Array Types, would
    resolve this issue. Jason Merrill will propose wording.

Other issues:

    There had been some discussion on the reflector about extensions
    to support assembly language(s). No written proposal has been
    received on this issue.   It has been suggested that the existing
    definition is adequate to describe assembly language code.