oldman@dg-rtp.dg.com (Dan Oldman) (08/30/90)
Aug. 30, 1990
Call for Participation:
UNIX System V Programming Language issues SIG
Announcing the formation of a UNIX International Special Interest
Group on Programming Language Issues. This group will act as a
clearing house for UI member companies and other interested
parties to resolve issues of supporting various programming
languages on UNIX System V. One pressing problem is the support
of debugging.
Debugging Support
=================
One significant change introduced by System V Release 4 is the
replacement of COFF (Common Object File Format) with ELF
(Executable and Linker Format) representation of programs. COFF,
despite many problems, had a barely acceptable but functional
representation for debugging information. ELF, at this time,
lacks anything but the suggestion that the .debug section might
contain some debugging information. There is also only a weak
standard in the area of debugger interface to the kernel.
The lack of a standard is a serious impediment to third party
compiler writers who wish to work with the standard system
debugger and with third party debugger writers that wish to
operate on many UNIX platforms with standard and third party
compilers. Any programmer who wishes to debug an application that
is built with two or more different compilers is also hurt by the
lack of a standard.
Attempting to develop standards in this area is not new. The
needs of the popular programming languages and debuggers are
substantial and past attempts have ended with the current
situation of "agreeing to disagree". This ignores the fact that
the 80-20 rule applies well here. We can solve the needs of 80%
of the community with 20% of the work. If we design extensibility
into the standard, the remaining 20% of the community can build
on top of the standard and get more done with less effort.
UNIX Software Labs has developed a new debugger representation,
called DWARF, that is used in SVR4 C Issue 5 compiler and SDB
debugger. It has some of the qualities of an acceptable standard
and would probably be a good place to start.
Goals of the SIG
================
As stated earlier, the overall goal of the SIG is to provide a
clearing house for UI member companies and anyone else who has
an interest to resolve programming language support related
issues on UNIX System V. There are some specific projects that
the SIG must complete as soon as possible:
1. Develop a robust and efficient framework for debugging
information. This framework will consist of a generic base
that deals with the common problems of the popular third
generation languages and supports extensibility for other
uses.
2. Define how the following languages map onto this
framework: C (K&R and ANSI), Fortran (77 and 90), C++, and
probably others.
3. Define the format of "core" files.
4. Define the interface between the debugger and the RTLD
(shared library runtime loader).
5. Define a standard for Kernel support of debugging and then
extend that standard to deal with upcoming features like
threads.
Beyond that there are other issues that could be standardized
such as support for debugging in the absence of debugger
information and support for long long integer types. I'm sure
that there are more things that I have not mentioned here.
Mechanism
=========
It is the intention of the SIG to have bi-monthly meetings and
heavy network and conference call communication. We plan to have
an organizational meeting in late September. Here's a start for
the proposed agenda. I will add anything else to it that is
requested. (See feedback below.)
Introductions and opportunity for individuals to state their
interest and what they expect the SIG to accomplish
Charter discussions and election of officers
Standardization priorities
Debugger issues
Overall Goals of Debugging Information
Proposal for the framework
Discussion about the next meeting
Feedback
========
For the first meeting, I am targeting Thursday September 27th in the
Boston area, but a final decision won't be made until I hear from
the people who are interested in being involved. Please respond
before Friday, September 7th, via email, fax, mail, or phone with the
information requested below. I will acknowledge any messages that you
send me to avoid things being lost in the mail.
Name:
Organization:
Area of interest:
Phone number:
Fax number:
Email address:
Mail address:
Level of interest:
__ I will attend most meetings and am willing to do
significant spec writing.
__ I will attend most meetings and actively review
proposals.
__ I will actively monitor the email discussions, but will
not be able to attend meetings.
__ I am interested in occasional status reports.
Preferred location for meetings:
__ I can make it to the first meeting if it adheres to the
following time or location constraints:
I would like the following added to the agenda:
Any other comments:
Thank you for your interest.
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Dan Oldman internet: oldman@dg-rtp.dg.com
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