Re: [PATCH] Naming dwarves

[Jim Blandy <jimb@redhat.com>]

What Elena and Andrew said about the current naming convention
(dwarf2) is my understanding, too.

But it's a bit confusing to talk about the modern Dwarf reader this
way.  If I say "the Dwarf reader", it's not clear that I don't mean
Dwarf 1.  (Which I never do.)  If I say "the Dwarf 2 reader", then it
sounds like I want to exclude the extensions in Dwarf 3.  (Which I
almost never do.)  And I end up saying odd-sounding things like "the
modern Dwarf reader".

The major distinction between Dwarf 1 and Dwarf 2 was the introduction
of the abbreviation table, introduced because Dwarf 1 was even more
enormous than Dwarf 2 is.  But since that change, Dwarf has been able
to grow pretty well, and incorporate major improvements like duplicate
suppression, without breaking compatibility again.  So I wonder if we
won't eventually have a reader named dwarf2 that handles Dwarf 2, 3,
and 4.

Would it make sense to, at some point (not today) adopt "dwarf1" as
the prefix for the dwarf1 reader, and simply "dwarf" for the modern
Dwarf reader?

For what it's worth, the latest Dwarf spec usually just calls it
"DWARF".