[Dwarf-Discuss] Reserving a new DW_AT_calling_convention value

[Roland McGrath]

> This arrangement kind-of stinks for debuggers that want to support lots
> of different compilers on lots of different platforms. The problems is
> that if there's a conflict, it's sometimes hard for the debugger to
> puzzle it out the meaning of a vendor value.

Indeed.  To handle potential conflicts, you really have to figure out which
"vendor" convention-set you think you are looking at in a program
(potentially in each CU, I guess).  A "quirks table" by matching on
DW_AT_producer strings is probably the most robust thing you can do.
(I'm not saying it's pretty.  But we're talking here about the case
specifically where "standardization" as such has broken down.)

> It would be nice if we (the DWARF workgroup) could informally keep track
> of the values that are in use just to decrease the odds of a conflict.

By all means.  Just the emphasis on "informally" here.
There is http://wiki.dwarfstd.org/index.php?title=Vendor_Extensions
and populating that (informally) seems like the obvious place to start.


Thanks,
Roland