Re: libiberty: Would it be reasonable to add support for GnuCOBOL function name demangling?

[Eric Gallager <egall@gwmail.gwu.edu>]

On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 3:17 AM Simon Sobisch via Gcc-patches
<gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>
> Hi fellow hackers,
>
> first of all: I'm not sure if this is the correct mailing list for this
> question, but I did not found a separate one and
> gnu.org/software/libiberty redirects to
> https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libiberty.pdf - so I'm here.
> If there's a better place for this: please drop a note.
>
> I've never "worked" with libiberty directly but am sure I'm using it
> quite regularly with various tools including GDB and valgrind.
> Therefore I currently cannot send a patch for the function name
> demangling, but if this is a reasonable thing to add I'd like to work on
> this with someone.
>
> As noted: the first question is: is it reasonable to add support for
> GnuCOBOL?
>
> * How would the demangler know it is to be called? Just "best match"
> (GnuCOBOL modules always have some symbols in it which should be
> available if there is any debugging information in, if that helps)?
> * Giving the work of gcc-cobol which was discussed on this mailing list
> some months ago (not sure about its current state) there possibly will
> be a COBOL support be "integrated" - with possibly different name
> mangling. But still - GnuCOBOL is used "in the wild" (for production
> environments) since years (and will be for many years to come, both
> based on GCC and with other compilers) and the name mangling rules did
> not change.
>

If the plan is to integrate GnuCOBOL into trunk, then I'd say adding
demangling support for it to libiberty would not only be reasonable,
but also a necessary prerequisite for merging the rest of it.

> A second question would be: Is there anyone who would be willing to work
> on this with me?
> Where would "we" or I start?
>
> Thank you for taking the time to read and possibly answer,
> Simon Sobisch
>
> Maintainer GnuCOBOL
>
>