Re: [PATCH 1/2] pdb: Allow loading by gdb

Re: [PATCH 1/2] pdb: Allow loading by gdb

[Alan Modra]

On Tue, May 09, 2023 at 01:32:46AM +0100, Mark Harmstone wrote:
> Add a new bfd_flavour value, and expose PDB files as objects, so that
> they get accepted by add-symbol-file.

By equating object_p and archive_p you are going to get whichever of
bfd_archive or bfd_object is tried first as the argument of
bfd_check_format (or bfd_check_format_matches).  This seems fragile to
me.  We have multiple binary utilities, ld, and gbd all calling
bfd_check_format.  Do they all work correctly with this change, and
will they continue to work correctly with future changes?

I think you'd be better off staying with just one format, and
bfd_archive probably fits pdb files better than bfd_object.

-- 
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM

Re: [PATCH 1/2] pdb: Allow loading by gdb

[Mark Harmstone]

On 10/5/23 01:56, Alan Modra wrote:
> I think you'd be better off staying with just one format, and
> bfd_archive probably fits pdb files better than bfd_object.

Thanks Alan. But `add-symbol-file` is set up to accept object
files - does this imply that I should change it to treat PDB
archives as a special case?

Mark

Re: [PATCH 1/2] pdb: Allow loading by gdb

[Alan Modra]

On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 02:04:29AM +0100, Mark Harmstone wrote:
> On 10/5/23 01:56, Alan Modra wrote:
> > I think you'd be better off staying with just one format, and
> > bfd_archive probably fits pdb files better than bfd_object.
> 
> Thanks Alan. But `add-symbol-file` is set up to accept object
> files - does this imply that I should change it to treat PDB
> archives as a special case?

I expect that is what should happen, but I'm not a gdb maintainer and
probably shouldn't be giving gdb advice.

-- 
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM

Re: [PATCH 1/2] pdb: Allow loading by gdb

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Harmstone <mark@harmstone.com> writes:

Mark> On 10/5/23 01:56, Alan Modra wrote:
>> I think you'd be better off staying with just one format, and
>> bfd_archive probably fits pdb files better than bfd_object.

Mark> Thanks Alan. But `add-symbol-file` is set up to accept object
Mark> files - does this imply that I should change it to treat PDB
Mark> archives as a special case?

It seems fine to me as long as add-symbol-file doesn't end up letting
users supply ".a" files.

I guess I'd expect the usual approach to be something more automatic
though?

Tom