Re: Getting a symbol table from Gnat 3.15p on Windows

[tmoran@acm.org]

Write a source code scanner (ASIS?) to find variables you want to
monitor/modify.  This should produce as output a package that looks
like this:

package my_symbols is
  pragma elaborate_body;
  global : integer;  -- a line like this for each variable of interest
end my_symbols;

with ada.streams,
     ada.streams.stream_io,
     system;
package body my_symbols is
  f : ada.streams.stream_io.file_type;
  s : ada.streams.stream_io.stream_access;
begin
  ada.streams.stream_io.create(f, ada.streams.stream_io.out_file,
                               "my_symbols.dat");
  s := ada.streams.stream_io.stream(f);
  --
  String'Output(S, "Global");           -- this line pair for each variable
  System.Address'Output(S, Global'address);
  --
  ada.streams.stream_io.close(f);
end my_symbols;

Then add "with my_symbols" to your testee program.  Recompilation will compile
my_symbols.ads, my_symbols.adb, and testee.adb, which should be pretty quick.  Then
Relink and run testee just long enough for elaboration to produce the
my_symbols.dat file.

my_symbols.dat is your desired symbol table.  Massage it, read it into a
database, print it in hex, generate source code like
  Addr_Global : constant System.Address := 16#1234#;
or whatever.  Your monitor program now has the symbol table and can do
whatever you want using it.  My_symbols still exists and runs as part of
elaboration of testee, so addresses don't change, but once it's written
its output it should have no further effect on the running of testee.