[Dwarf-Discuss] Reserving a new DW_AT_calling_convention value

[Jonas Maebe]

On 01 Apr 2009, at 23:26, Roland McGrath wrote:

> In the lo_user..hi_user range, it is up to each "vendor" to decide the
> conventions for using that range.  The different implementors  
> ("vendors")
> try to stay aware of each other's uses, but "vendor-specific  
> extensions"
> means exactly that there is not any shared formal management of that  
> space.

Ok.

> The DWARF committee decides on the common uses in the <lo_user range.
> It's entirely reasonable to propose new values in the common range.

I'm primarily interested in the i386 "Borland fastcall" calling  
convention at this time (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_calling_conventions#Borland_fastcall 
  for a short description). Given that it's only applicable to i386  
platforms, and moreover only to Delphi (should that compiler ever  
generate DWARF debug information) or to compilers/debuggers that aim  
to be Delphi compatible/interoperable (such as the Free Pascal  
Compiler, on which I work), I'm not sure how appropriate it would be  
to include it in the official standard.

> For ELF and DWARF "vendor" stuff in the GNU and Linux world, the  
> convention
> is consensus of the binutils, elfutils, and (when relevant) GCC  
> maintainers.
> If you propose your patches for binutils/gdb and gcc in the normal  
> ways on
> those mailing lists, that will do it.

I'll probably go this route, thanks.


Jonas