Re: update on speedup project

[Roland McGrath <roland at redhat dot com>]

> * The dwarf spec is a bit strange on the topic of qualification.  It
>   says:
> 
>     In the case of the name of a function member or static data member
>     of a C++ structure, class or union, the name presented in the
>     .debug_pubnames section is not the simple name given by the
>     DW_AT_name attribute of the referenced debugging entry, but rather
>     the fully qualified name of the data or function member.
> 
>   This omits namespaces, which is weird and (IMO) not useful.

I wouldn't take this as an exhaustive normative explanation.
Rather, I'd infer from "fully qualified" that it means all the
qualifications a name can have in the language in question.
You can ask dwarf-discuss@lists.dwarfstd.org for clarification.

> * Supposedly, no existing debugger actually uses pubnames.

Porbably respondents on dwarf-discuss will act as a sufficient poll
to find out.

> Now I am looking at something Apple implemented: defer reading of
> shared library symbols until they are actually needed.  I think this
> may be a simpler way to achieve the same goal of speeding up "attach".

What does "actually needed" mean?  Until the first by-name search?
(It's clear what it means when you're not doing any by-name searches.)


Thanks,
Roland