Re: ASIS?

[parthaspanda22@gmail.com]

> You list various non-ASIS sources for the target- and
> link-map-specific information (below). Your original query was:

How? By extending the ASIS spec to include map file information,
isnt the map file made redundant? Of course, it will
require multiple tools in the chain to write to
a common ASIS database.

>
>  > If one were to need an API to fulfill all requirements by
>  > a Debugger, Source Browser and a Syntax-aware editor from
>  > the IDE, then would ASIS be it?
>
> It was the point "all requirements" to which I objected, but I must
> have misunderstood or not noticed your phrase "... from the IDE",
> which I now understand means "... apart from the information that
> can be had from other sources". But there are some executable
> program formats that include most of the ASIS-like information (for
> C code, at least), so for such executable formats a debugger would
> need no additional information from the IDE.

It would be difficult to debug Generics or variant record types
unless there were a HLL interface. I expect ASIS to atleast
be able to address all Ada-specific syntactic sugar.
(There is a link to JSIS, but alas, it leads to
a useless site.)

>
> Anyway, your question and Ludovic's answer are sensible if one
> assumes that the "other sources" are some limited executable format
> such as ELF without DWARF.

Yes, a debugger must still need access to a working executable
for instrumentation. Machine-level debugging hasnt been
pursued that extensively by processors, so executable
instrumentation(i.e. SW debugging) is generally the norm.

>
> Yes, or the debugging info in the executable file.
>
> > 2) stack-frame
>
> >     A lot of the information about stack are constants(e.g. the bias,
> >     the frame pointer register, the stack pointer register,
> >     the ABI) and these are hard-wired into the debugger.
>
> Depends on the target. Some ABIs are very flexible and let the
> compiler do what it likes.

The scope of my research precludes going on a path where
the ABI is "flexible" but there are many examples of
your point, so I cant agree more.