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D - How do you compile the front end?

reply kinghajj <kinghajj_member pathlink.com> writes:
I tried, and got lots of errors: can you include a makefile in the next release,
please? That would be *very* helpfull.
Apr 01 2004
parent reply Ilya Minkov <minkov cs.tum.edu> writes:
kinghajj schrieb:

 I tried, and got lots of errors: can you include a makefile in the next
release,
 please? That would be *very* helpfull.


You cannot compile this front-end because you don't have a back-end. ;) 
It is primarily thought for other compiler and tool maintainers, as well 
as for everyone who wants to read the code.

Join D.gnu and grab one there, they compile against GCC source.

-eye
Apr 02 2004
parent reply kinghajj <kinghajj_member pathlink.com> writes:
You cannot compile this front-end because you don't have a back-end. ;) 
It is primarily thought for other compiler and tool maintainers, as well 
as for everyone who wants to read the code.

Join D.gnu and grab one there, they compile against GCC source.

-eye


..I thought that DMD made the OBJ files, and DMC made the exe from those.
If not windows, isn't that how it works on Linux, since it already has GCC on it
(usually).

I was trying to build the front end for Darwin (MacOS X).
Apr 02 2004
parent reply Ilya Minkov <minkov cs.tum.edu> writes:
kinghajj schrieb:

 ..I thought that DMD made the OBJ files, and DMC made the exe from those.
 If not windows, isn't that how it works on Linux, since it already has GCC on
it
 (usually).


 From DMC installation, only the linker is used directly. DMD is 
compiled statically against that part of DMC called "back-end" which 
generates object code (.obj files) from an abstract (C-level) 
representation of a program. Thus "back-end" is not included in the 
compiler source, but is included in every executable, and it's the same 
with GCC version. BTW, .obj file format is different between compilers. 
But they always contain already compiled machine code, which only has 
placeholders for the code which has to be found in other .obj files. The 
linker connects many .obj files to an executable by editing this 
placeholders and writing an OS-standard file format.

DMD for Linux contains a modified version of DMC back-end which outputs 
object files in the format which GNU linker understands under Linux, and 
uses the GCC linker. However, it's still a DMC back-end and it can only 
generate code for Intel CPUs, and it is an enormous amount of work to 
add support for different CPUs (exception may be AMD64), so don't expect 
it to ever be ported over to IBMs.


 I was trying to build the front end for Darwin (MacOS X).


Then you definately need one from D.gnu, namely the recent GDC, or you 
can ask resistor or someone else of the MacOS guys to send you a 
compiled one. Please read their discussion, i guess they have just made 
it work with MacOS X. BTW, its principle is exactly the same as with 
DMC, the compiler executable will contain the GCC back-and and only make 
use of the already installed GCC linker.

-eye
Apr 02 2004
parent reply Manfred Nowak <svv1999 hotmail.com> writes:
Ilya Minkov wrote:


 DMD for Linux contains a modified version of DMC back-end which outputs 
 object files in the format which GNU linker understands under Linux, and 
 uses the GCC linker.


Are the formats different between linux and windows? If they are the
same, I would like to have a windows dmd to use with cygwin or msys.

So long!
Apr 02 2004
parent reply Ilya Minkov <minkov cs.tum.edu> writes:
Manfred Nowak schrieb:


 Ilya Minkov wrote:
 
 

DMD for Linux contains a modified version of DMC back-end which outputs 
object files in the format which GNU linker understands under Linux, and 
uses the GCC linker.


 
 Are the formats different between linux and windows? If they are the
 same, I would like to have a windows dmd to use with cygwin or msys.


They are different. DMD on Windows uses OMF also used by Intel, Watcom, 
Borland (mutually not completely compatible!).  DMD and GCC on Linux use 
ELF. Cygwin GCC and MinGW on Windows use COFF very (but not quite) 
similar to that of Microsoft compilers. Perhaps you can use something 
like coff2omf available from Walter in his extended utility package, but 
i think it is somewhat unstable where it comes to code which imports 
from DLLs... There is also a Linker from Christof Meerwald 
(http://cmeerw.org/prog/owtools/) adapted from OpenWatcom, you can try 
if it links together DigitalMars code and MS and GCC code - it should 
understand many variants of COFF and OMF.

COFF is also a basis for executable file format on Windows, while ELF is 
executable on Linux.

Otherwise than linking with GCC you should not have any problem at all 
using DM tools from cygwin or msys. ;)

-eye
Apr 02 2004
parent reply J Anderson <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> writes:
Ilya Minkov wrote:


 They are different. DMD on Windows uses OMF also used by Intel, 
 Watcom, Borland (mutually not completely compatible!).  DMD and GCC on 
 Linux use ELF. Cygwin GCC and MinGW on Windows use COFF very (but not 
 quite) similar to that of Microsoft compilers. Perhaps you can use 
 something like coff2omf available from Walter in his extended utility 
 package, but i think it is somewhat unstable where it comes to code 
 which imports from DLLs... There is also a Linker from Christof 
 Meerwald (http://cmeerw.org/prog/owtools/) adapted from OpenWatcom, 
 you can try if it links together DigitalMars code and MS and GCC code 
 - it should understand many variants of COFF and OMF.

 COFF is also a basis for executable file format on Windows, while ELF 
 is executable on Linux.

 Otherwise than linking with GCC you should not have any problem at all 
 using DM tools from cygwin or msys. ;)

 -eye


Interesting.

So do you know much about the CodeView format and how it differs from 
the COFF format? That's vague I know.

I'm just been trying to get my head around the format for this debugger 
me and Charles are writing and wonder if your a good resource for this 
subject.

-- 
-Anderson: http://badmama.com.au/~anderson/
Apr 02 2004
next sibling parent reply Ilya Minkov <minkov cs.tum.edu> writes:
J Anderson schrieb:


 Interesting.
 
 So do you know much about the CodeView format and how it differs from 
 the COFF format? That's vague I know.


I don't know how debugging information is embedded into executable. It
also seems that it is not very dependant of the object file format?


 I'm just been trying to get my head around the format for this debugger 
 me and Charles are writing and wonder if your a good resource for this 
 subject.


No, no, i don't know anything. All i can do is give useless advice to
clueless newbee users. ;)

BTW, why are you writing a debugger? You'll have an unportable Windows
debugger then... I would say it possibly makes more sense to change the
GNU debugger to unmangle D mangles correctly, i heard that GDC already
outputs debugging info. And steering of GDB can be fairly easily
embedded into IDEs. This will also shift the situation of GDC being the
new playground for language features. I believe many would like to see,
e.g. serialization being ported over from DLI - i just recently
discovered to my surprise it's *not* in DMD!

-eye
Apr 02 2004
next sibling parent reply Ilya Minkov <minkov cs.tum.edu> writes:
Ilya Minkov schrieb:


 No, no, i don't know anything. All i can do is give useless advice to
 clueless newbee users. ;)


Nontheless, i can be useful by googling.


http://www.jorgon.freeserve.co.uk/Other/pdb.htm

Describes the CodeView format. It states that executables only contain a 
link to a PDB file, which contains the complete information. According 
to this, PDB CodeView format changes and is for some versions not 
documented, but there exists an API to access it.


http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/freeSoftware/peFileExplorer.html

Open source to access information in executables.


http://www.orgon.com/w2k_internals/cd.html

These examples from a book can hook on debugger interface and read 
CodeView information. Here they are in executable form, they come with 
full source code with a book.


BTW, have you been thinking of reusing at least OpenWatcom debugger's 
source? It also understands CodeView, even if it dislikes it sometimes. 
People have reported that it likes to crash on DMC generated 
executables, but i was able to use it.

 From the GoBug documentation it also appears that there was some other 
debug information type called COFF besides CodeView, on the other hand 
COFF is the .obj format and PE-COFF are executables.


http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/356/11/5.html

This is a page from PE/COFF executable format description, about debug 
information.

I'll see if i can find anything else useful tomorrow.

-eye
Apr 02 2004
parent J Anderson <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> writes:
Thanks a lot for your help.


Ilya Minkov wrote:


 Ilya Minkov schrieb:


 No, no, i don't know anything. All i can do is give useless advice to
 clueless newbee users. ;)



 Nontheless, i can be useful by googling.


 http://www.jorgon.freeserve.co.uk/Other/pdb.htm

 Describes the CodeView format. It states that executables only contain 
 a link to a PDB file, which contains the complete information. 
 According to this, PDB CodeView format changes and is for some 
 versions not documented, but there exists an API to access it.


 http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/freeSoftware/peFileExplorer.html

 Open source to access information in executables.


 http://www.orgon.com/w2k_internals/cd.html

 These examples from a book can hook on debugger interface and read 
 CodeView information. Here they are in executable form, they come with 
 full source code with a book.


 BTW, have you been thinking of reusing at least OpenWatcom debugger's 
 source? It also understands CodeView, even if it dislikes it 
 sometimes. People have reported that it likes to crash on DMC 
 generated executables, but i was able to use it.



I'll have a look.


 From the GoBug documentation it also appears that there was some other 
 debug information type called COFF besides CodeView, on the other hand 
 COFF is the .obj format and PE-COFF are executables.


 http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/356/11/5.html

 This is a page from PE/COFF executable format description, about debug 
 information.

 I'll see if i can find anything else useful tomorrow.

 -eye




-- 
-Anderson: http://badmama.com.au/~anderson/
Apr 02 2004
prev sibling parent reply J Anderson <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> writes:
Ilya Minkov wrote:


 And steering of GDB can be fairly easily 
 embedded into IDEs. This will also shift the situation of GDC being the
 new playground for language features.


I can't get GDB to work with D in windows, I get
"not in executable format: File format not recognized"
I think GDB doesn't understand codeview.

CDB (comes with windbg) is another dos debugger but I can't understand 
how to use that.


 -eye


-- 
-Anderson: http://badmama.com.au/~anderson/
Apr 03 2004
parent Ilya Minkov <minkov cs.tum.edu> writes:
J Anderson schrieb:

 Ilya Minkov wrote:



 I can't get GDB to work with D in windows, I get
 "not in executable format: File format not recognized"
 I think GDB doesn't understand codeview.


No, it doesn't work with DMD or DigitalMars executables. I meant using
it with GDC. GCC uses its own debugging information format under
Windows, i think it is stabs? The documentation is too vague and says 
nothing specific on the subject, as far as i can remember.

Ah, this page here gives more clues:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/gdb/gdbint/gdbint_6.html#SEC40


 CDB (comes with windbg) is another dos debugger but I can't understand 
 how to use that.


You probably mean command line debugger? Wonderful, i didn't know it 
exists. ;) It apparently diverges from common conventions of JDB and GDB.

http://www.codeproject.com/debug/windbg_part1.asp

Here you can find a table with commands. This page also states that the
table has been taken from a help file which is distributed with windbg. :>

-eye
Apr 03 2004
prev sibling next sibling parent Mark T <Mark_member pathlink.com> writes:
So do you know much about the CodeView format and how it differs from 
the COFF format? That's vague I know.

I'm just been trying to get my head around the format for this debugger 
me and Charles are writing and wonder if your a good resource for this 
subject.


you may want look for stuff created by Al Stevens (former Dr. Dobbs columnist)
he had many discussions about this in his column because he had to create a
Windows debugger for GCC C++.

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb-patches/2002-09/msg00445.html
http://www.alstevens.com/quincy.html
Apr 03 2004
prev sibling parent reply "Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:
"J Anderson" <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> wrote in message
news:c4kkr7$2der$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 So do you know much about the CodeView format and how it differs from
 the COFF format? That's vague I know.


The debug info format is distinct from the object file format. Codeview (CV)
format can be embedded in both OMF and COFF files. Neither OMF nor COFF
specify any debug format other than how line numbers correspond to source
files.

What I'd do first is google and download specs for Codeview, ELF, Dwarf, and
Portable Executable (PE) file formats. The debugger need not be concerned
with OMF nor COFF, since the debugger does not deal with object files.
Apr 05 2004
parent reply J Anderson <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> writes:
Walter wrote:


The debug info format is distinct from the object file format. Codeview (CV)
format can be embedded in both OMF and COFF files. Neither OMF nor COFF
specify any debug format other than how line numbers correspond to source
files.

What I'd do first is google and download specs for Codeview, ELF, Dwarf, and
Portable Executable (PE) file formats. The debugger need not be concerned
with OMF nor COFF, since the debugger does not deal with object files.
  


I'm probably wrong, but unfortunately the Codeview specs don't appear to 
be online.  There have been a few other frustrated people in other 
newsgroups who say the same thing.

However there appears to be heaps of info about PE.

-- 
-Anderson: http://badmama.com.au/~anderson/
Apr 07 2004
parent "Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:
"J Anderson" <REMOVEanderson badmama.com.au> wrote in message
news:c50o7h$2kbv$1 digitaldaemon.com...

 Walter wrote:

The debug info format is distinct from the object file format. Codeview




(CV)

format can be embedded in both OMF and COFF files. Neither OMF nor COFF
specify any debug format other than how line numbers correspond to source
files.

What I'd do first is google and download specs for Codeview, ELF, Dwarf,




and

Portable Executable (PE) file formats. The debugger need not be concerned
with OMF nor COFF, since the debugger does not deal with object files.


 I'm probably wrong, but unfortunately the Codeview specs don't appear to
 be online.  There have been a few other frustrated people in other
 newsgroups who say the same thing.


Microsoft used to make it available as part of their "Open Tools" program. I
suggest contacting MS and seeing if they'll release a spec to you.
Apr 13 2004