DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.2 delorie.com 609HPvB12577466
DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.2 delorie.com 609HPvSC2577429
Message-ID: <0752ebcc-24dd-4ea1-ad68-7822463d0eda@polymtl.ca>
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2026 12:25:50 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
From: "Simon Marchi (simon DOT marchi AT polymtl DOT ca) [via djgpp AT delorie DOT com]" <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Supported debug info formats
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Content-Language: fr
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Hi,

GDB maintainer here.  I'm in the process of cleaning up obsolete things,
like debug info formats that are not longer relevant.  I am now looking
at COFF [1].  I am wondering if this is still useful for DJGPP, or if
nowadays you can use DWARF like most other targets (or if people use GDB
for DJGPP at all).

In the gcc source code [1] I see this, so I guess that DWARF 2 is the
default debug format now?

    /* Support generation of DWARF2 debugging info.  */
    #define DWARF2_DEBUGGING_INFO 1

    #undef PREFERRED_DEBUGGING_TYPE
    #define PREFERRED_DEBUGGING_TYPE DWARF2_DEBUG

...

        /* Don't emit DWARF3/4 unless specifically selected. */         \
        /* DWARF3/4 currently does not work for DJGPP.  */              \
        if (!OPTION_SET_P (dwarf_version))                        \
            dwarf_version = 2;                                          \
                                                                        \
        }                                                               \

Note that I am only talking about the debug info aspects of COFF,
there are probably some things in coffread.c that would still be needed
in order to read executable files on Windows and/or DJGPP.

Thanks,

Simon

[1] https://gitlab.com/gnutools/gcc/-/blob/c10076b34d3ede485bfb306b2a91feeee8368cd5/gcc/config/i386/djgpp.h#L20-24