Re: [9fans] software ports

[Mike Haertel <mike@ducky.net>]

In comp.os.plan9, you wrote:
>Without that, I'm sure we'll just hit a debugging wall.
>Anyone know what gdb expects?

With Elf binaries, gdb can work with two different kinds of debugging
symbols: Berkeley dbx-style "stabs" (which gdb expects to find in
Elf sections named ".stab" and ".stabstr"), or AT&T-style DWARF
debugging symbols, which have a different set of ELF section names.

ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/GCC/ELF.doc.tar.gz
(describes basic Elf file format, but not debugging symbols)

There is some documentation for the DWARF2 debugging format
in ftp://sgigate.sgi.com/pub/dwarf.

The "stabs" debugging format is described in the dbx(5) man page
under 4.3BSD.  Unfortunately, this documentation does not seem to
exist in any of the recent free *BSD's; this is a valuable man page
and I don't know what became of it.  If you have a printed copy of
the old Usenix 4.3BSD manuals you can find it there (that's what I
have), or if you have a 4.3bsd tape sitting around you'll find it
there.  Anyway the stabs format has probably evolved somewhat since
the 4.3bsd man page was written, moreover I think gdb has its own
slightly idiosyncratic variation that fixes some problems with the
original dbx format.  So if you want a well-documented format you're
probably better off with DWARF.