Re: gdb 5.2.1 doesn't know Ada, gcc 3.2.1 does

[hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl (Waldek Hebisch)]

Harry Rockefeller (harryr@ssd.fsi.com) wrote:
: harryr@ssd.fsi.com (Harry Rockefeller) wrote in message news:<d9a42677.0212281447.7d77da47@posting.google.com>...

: I was wondering why there was no response.  I think I
: misdiagnosed the problem and so will provide a bit more
: detail too.
: > I have a gentoo Linux system and applied the
: > bugzilla patch to get Ada built into gcc 3.2.1

The question seem to be almost a frequently asked question but as 
long as I can see there is no really good answer (this may explain
the silence). I hit the same problem (AFAIKS) -- gcc-3.x on Linux 
by default uses Dwarf-2 debugging format. It seems that Dwarf-2 
debugging does not work with gdb for Ada (and also Pascal). The 
good answer would be to implement the missing functionality (but
we are talking about free software so the one who needs it should
do the work...). 
There are two possible workarounds:
-- use stabs debug format (-gstabs or -gstabs+ instead of -g)
-- make gdb treat unknown language as C.

The first workaround requires that Ada runtime is compiled 
with -gstabs too, otherwise gdb dies when getting into runtime 
(actually I have not tried recompiling runtime, but checked that 
debugging seem to work as long as as stabs are used).
The second approach requires patching gdb (I did a little dirty hack
to this end, may post a patch if there is nothing better around), and
using C syntax (in particular using mangled names).      

I would like to hear about good answer (no, I have no plans to do 
more hacking on gdb). 

--
                              Waldek Hebisch
hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl    or hebisch@hera.math.uni.wroc.pl