On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 12:09 PM David Edelsohn <dje....@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 10:41 AM Jeff Law <jeffreya...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On 4/8/2021 8:06 AM, Simon Marchi via Gcc wrote: > > > On 2021-04-08 9:11 a.m., David Edelsohn wrote: > > >>>> AIX continues to use and support STABS, although it is transitioning > > >>>> to DWARF. If this is intended as a general statement about removal of > > >>>> STABS support in GCC, > > >>> Yes, it is. > > >>> > > >>> Richard. > > >> Richard, > > >> > > >> It is inappropriate to unilaterally make this decision without > > >> discussion with all affected ports and maintainers, without warning, > > >> and without deprecation. I request that you rescind this decision. > > >> > > >> It is somewhat ironic to act as a dictator when we are having a > > >> discussion about dictatorial behavior in GCC leadership. > > > I don't really want to start such a debate about GCC politics. If stabs > > > is not ready to be deleted, that's fine. But it would be good to go > > > through all targets for which it is the default (like avr), and see if > > > they are ready to be switched to DWARF. That's a baby step towards > > > eventually deleting it. > > > > Agreed. I'd bet AIX is the outlier here and that most, if not all, > > other ports that may currently be stabs-by-default can switch to > > dwarf-by-default with no significant fallout. So we fix everything we > > can while we wait for AIX to move forward. > > I am not requesting a continuation of support for STABS to be > obstinate. AIX has some support for DWARF, but STABS continues to be > the primary debug format on AIX. Binutils does not fully function on > AIX and the AIX native tools support for DWARF is incomplete. Also, > AIX uses XCOFF file format, not ELF, so DWARF syntax needs to be > adapted and all of the tools need to agree on the way that AIX symbols > are represented in DWARF. > > IBM is adding support for AIX to LLVM and LLVM does not support STABS > debugging, which has both exposed problems and is motivating work to > resolve the gaps, but the additional features and fixes require time > to implement and deploy. > > I am eager to transition to DWARF on AIX, but I continue to ask that > the support not be removed until DWARF can be used as a complete > substitute on AIX. I hope that full support for DWARF in AIX will be > completed in 2022 and removal of GCC support for STABS can be targeted > for GCC 13, not GCC 12. >
I have discussed the STABS debugging situation internally and the AIX team has accepted that STABS support will be removed in GCC 12. This also will mean that I will remove the AIX 6.1 and AIX 7.1 configurations for GCC 12. If you want to delete all STABS debugging support in Stage 1, go ahead. Thanks, David
