[Dwarf-discuss] DW_AT_MIPS_linkage_name

[Daniel Berlin]

On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 16:25 -0500, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 01:13:37PM -0800, Chris Quenelle wrote:
> > 
> > I notice that g++ will emit the linkage name
> > for declaractions of some kinds of symbols.
> > (The symbols I'm looking at are all C++ symbols
> > with mangled linker names.)
> > 
> > I'm considering the same thing for the Sun compilers
> > because it makes it easier for the debugger to match
> > up the declaration with other declarations and definitions
> > of member functions and variables.
> > 
> > Has this issue been raised before?
> > 
> > Should we add a new attribute in the standard
> > part of the attribute namespace for recording the
> > linkage name of a symbol?
> > 
> > I think you could get by without it, if you were
> > willing to merge type information in the debugger
> > by doing a complete node-wise comparison of the whole
> > type tree.  The debugger guy I am working with
> > is resisting that idea.  :-)  It's easier to just
> > compare two linker names to see if they represent
> > the same C++ symbol.
> 
> I think that relying on the linkage names to do this is a horrible,
> horrible, terrible idea.  I have spent a good chunk of the last three
> years trying to migrate GDB away from reliance on the linkage names
> (and I've got it nearly finished, too).  It causes all sorts of
> problems, by offering multiple ways to identify symbols.
> 

Also, it took up a ton of space in the binaries.

In fact, IIRC, statistically, we had more space used in
MIPS_linkage_name than the rest of the debug info combined.