[Dwarf-Discuss] Question / Proposal: breakpoints at global C++ constructors and destructors

[Michael Eager]

On 10/05/14 08:57, Daniel Gutson wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Michael Eager <eager at eagercon.com> wrote:
>> On 10/05/14 07:27, Daniel Gutson wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>>      this is my first post to this list.
>>>
>>> Context: I've been a gdb and gcc maintainer in the past, but I'm not a
>>> DWARF expert, so my post is
>>> from the user's POV.
>>>
>>> PROBLEM: ability to break in (all) the global objects' constructors
>>> (that is, before main() is called),
>>> and destructors (after main() ).
>>>
>>> As a matter of proof of concept, we've developed a gdb script that is
>>> also nontrivial and imperfect.
>>> FWIW, there were two ways: one implementation-agnostic by regex
>>> finding the ctors of all objects and
>>> adding breakpoints in all of them, then breaking at main, disabling
>>> the former and continuing;
>>> another way was implementation-specific, knowing the internals of the
>>> __static_initialization_and_destruction_0
>>> mechanism. Our proof of concept used the first approach but had a lot of
>>> issues.
>>>
>>> So, it would be absolutely trivial if there was a DW_CTOR_CALL /
>>> DW_DTOR_CALL with the address
>>> of the call instruction, so the debugger can break on those calls, and
>>> do a step-into to get into the ctor/dtor body.
>>
>>
>> I don't think that a special DWARF TAG would be required for this.
>> You could use DW_TAG_subprogram to describe the ctor/dtor routine,
>> marked with with DW_AT_artificial.
>
> It's not a solution, because the problem is not identifying the
> function (the constructor
> in this case), but the CALL to the constructor.
> Why? Because the same class could have several global instances, and non-global
> (attributes, local) instances.
> So what is needed is to identify the invoking places.

If what you want to do is break at all constructors/destructors, I
don't see why you need to break at the calling site.

Can you give an example?

-- 
Michael Eager	 eager at eagercon.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306  650-325-8077