Re: How do debuggers work?

In article 91-12-003 omtzigt-theo@CS.YALE.EDU (Erwinus Theodorus Leonardus Omtzigt (Theo)) writes:


| This is probably a too basic a question to put on the net, but can
| you point me in the direction of papers/books that explain how
| debuggers work. What does cc -g do to the code it generates such
| that a debugger know where to find the source code? Thanks in advance,


On a similar note, I've been contemplating adding debugger support for a
compiler I'm writing which uses C as an intermediate language. Function
names are `mangled' in the spirit of Cfront, and I'd like (at the very
least) to postprocess the .o files to fixup the symbol tables to look more
like the source language. The target debugger would be dbx (for which I do
not have source - gdb is not an option due to political reasons beyond my
control).


Can anyone point me towards some literature/manuals/sample code which
might educate me? The current platform is SunOS 4.1.1. I've read the a.out
man page (and peeked at the a.out.h), but it leaves a lot of details to my
imagination... Eventually, I'll want to port to other platforms, so info
on other debuggers/.o formats would also be helpful.


        Steve Tynor
        Georgia Tech Research Institute
        tynor@prism.gatech.edu
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