[Dwarf-discuss] Additional values for DW_AT_accessibility

[Ben Woodard]

I guess these have ABI implications as well and so they probably would need to be tracked so they would need to be available for tools like libabigail. 

While a tool like gdb probably wouldn’t care about the difference between “Private” and “Strict Private”, libabigail would need know if a member or a method changed from one to another. This would likely be more of an API level ABI change rather than a structural or calling convention change. 

If Cary hasn’t picked it up already, I’ll write up a super simple issue and ask him to file it. I haven’t done Pascal since Jr High but I can see how having the full range of access qualifiers defined could be important for some tools like libabigail and so I will also volunteer to champion the issue if necessary.

Do you think we really need “Published”? I can’t see any reason why that one is needed in DWARF.

-ben

> On Apr 24, 2026, at 1:36 PM, Martin Frb via Dwarf-discuss <dwarf-discuss@lists.dwarfstd.org> wrote:
> 
> Currently there are the values
> DW_ACCESS_public DW_ACCESS_private DW_ACCESS_protected
> 
> FreePascal has more (list at the end of mail)
> Could those please be added?
> 
> https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/ref/refse35.html
>> Private
>>   All fields and methods that are in a private block, can only be accessed in the module (i. e. unit) that contains the class definition.
>>   They can be accessed from     inside the classes’ methods or from outside them (e. g. from other classes’ methods)
>> Strict Private
>>   All fields and methods that are in a strict private block, can only be accessed from methods of the class itself. Other classes or descendent classes (even in the   same unit) cannot access strict private members.
>> Protected
>>   Is the same as Private, except that the members of a Protected section are also accessible to descendent types, even if they are implemented in other   modules.
>> Strict Protected
>>   Is the same as Protected, except that the members of a Protected section are also accessible to other classes implemented in the same unit. Strict protected   members are only visible to descendent classes, not to other classes in the same unit.
>> Public
>>   sections are always accessible.
>> Published
>>   From a language perspective, this is the same as a Public section, but the compiler generates also type information that is needed for automatic streaming of   these classes if the compiler is in the {$M+} state. Fields defined in a published section must be of class type. Array properties cannot be in a published section.
> 
> 
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