grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (11/29/89)
Does anyone know if DEC has plans to move away from the ECOFF loader format for the RISC machines, or if they're going to provide an assembler that allows your to pass debugging information to the .o file? The reason I ask is that the current situation is horrible. ECOFF is different than everything else, and you it appears you have to do mucho work to get any serious debugging information into the .o files. This will do nothing but hamper third-party compiler development. Certainly, MIPS regards their compiler technology as part of their competative advantage. However, that binds DECstation uses to MIPS compilers. If I want the most-optimizing C or FORTRAN compiler, I'll use the MIPS compiler. However, if I want a mature C++ compiler with good debugging, I'd like to use G++. Likewise, New Jersey ML is the only ML compiler available for the MIPS architecture. All these efforts are hampered by the obscure object file format and the complete lack of .stabs/.def's or anything for debugging symbols. The simple addition of supporting BSD-style load files would be sufficient. I think many people would be more than happy to beat out a version of GAS for the MIPS architecture, and the Gnu loader is fairly portable. Only loading and running the BSD-style files is a problem. This would also open an easy door to using GDB, a more usable debugger than the MIPS based DBX, and needed for third party software like G++. Without such a change, the peons in the field will need to reinvent the wheel yet again, simply for another loader format. Blech. Dirk Grunwald -- Univ. of Colorado at Boulder (grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu) (grunwald@boulder.colorado.edu)