Support of the D programming language

Support of the D programming language

[Gyula Gubacsi]

Hi,

I know the feature list contains some support of the D Programming
Language, and I've seen some stuff that was working, but is there
anyone who can give me an update what is actually the progress on
this? As far as I know, to this time there isn't any reliable debugger
that supports D on variety of architectures therefore I would like to
see the GDB support it. However, I couldn't find any resources to give
me a better info to what extent is D supported and what is needed to
be done on it. I would be happy to contribute to GDB so I would like
to see where should I start. I welcome any information!

progician

Re: Support of the D programming language

[Joel Brobecker]

> I know the feature list contains some support of the D Programming
> Language, and I've seen some stuff that was working, but is there
> anyone who can give me an update what is actually the progress on
> this?

No progress except for the initial contribution.  The current status
is documented in the GDB manual at:

    http://www.sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/D.html#D

(it says that the only D-specific feature that works is dynamic
arrays).

You could maybe try emailing the original author of the initial work:
Mihail Zenkov <mihail.zenkov@gmail.com>.

-- 
Joel

Re: Support of the D programming language

[Gyula Gubacsi]

Thank you!

I've contacted with Mihail however he said that the support is failing
due to some conflict with the DWARF4. (The 3 D-specific DWARF
extensions are overlapping with some DWARF4 extensions
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4180).
As this should be resolved within the compiler development community,
I would like to get comfortable to contribute to GDB the necessary D
specific interface. I read the development resources however I still
feel kinda lost in the GDB dev environment, I would appreciate if
someone could help me out with some specific blog entries or similar,
so I could catch up faster. (For first I would like to learn how to
add reasonable test suites for testing the D interface.)

Thanks

Gyula Gubacsi

On 8 November 2011 16:41, Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com> wrote:
>
> > I know the feature list contains some support of the D Programming
> > Language, and I've seen some stuff that was working, but is there
> > anyone who can give me an update what is actually the progress on
> > this?
>
> No progress except for the initial contribution.  The current status
> is documented in the GDB manual at:
>
>    http://www.sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/D.html#D
>
> (it says that the only D-specific feature that works is dynamic
> arrays).
>
> You could maybe try emailing the original author of the initial work:
> Mihail Zenkov <mihail.zenkov@gmail.com>.
>
> --
> Joel

Re: Support of the D programming language

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Gyula" == Gyula Gubacsi <gyula.gubacsi@gmail.com> writes:

Gyula> I've contacted with Mihail however he said that the support is failing
Gyula> due to some conflict with the DWARF4. (The 3 D-specific DWARF
Gyula> extensions are overlapping with some DWARF4 extensions
Gyula> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4180).
Gyula> As this should be resolved within the compiler development community,
Gyula> I would like to get comfortable to contribute to GDB the necessary D
Gyula> specific interface. I read the development resources however I still
Gyula> feel kinda lost in the GDB dev environment, I would appreciate if
Gyula> someone could help me out with some specific blog entries or similar,
Gyula> so I could catch up faster. (For first I would like to learn how to
Gyula> add reasonable test suites for testing the D interface.)

There's no easy way to learn a lot of this stuff.
You will end up having to read a lot of code.

I looked at the bug.  For DWARF extensions, I highly recommend
coordinating with GNU and putting the extension opcodes in the GNU part
of the vendor space.  Specifically I would recommend a page on the GCC
wiki describing the extension, plus a patch to include/dwarf2.h sent to
gcc-patches.  It is also friendly to also submit a proposal to DWARF
itself.

The DWARF reader in gdb is mostly in gdb/dwarf2read.c.  Your work would
probably be here, but may spill over to other places, depending on
exactly what support is needed to handle the various extensions.

For writing test cases, there is some documentation on dejagnu on the
web; and also some gdb-specific advice on the gdb wiki.  Since D support
is new, you would probably have to do more than is usual to get the
first test case written.

Tom