DWARF support

[Richard Eisenberg]

Thanks for this!

> On Nov 17, 2021, at 7:27 AM, Moritz Angermann <moritz.angermann at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> For Linux and most BSDs, we have settled on the Executable and Linking Format (ELF) as the container format for
> your machine code.  And you might see where the inspiration for DWARF might come from.

This suggests to me that DWARF is the canonical format for debugging information on Linux and most BSDs. Is that statement correct? If so, how is that different to "platform-native"? Actually, the precise wording doesn't matter: I think I'm just requesting for a more direct relationship between "DWARF" and "compatibility with all the debugging and profiling tools you use for other languages".

> 
> For macOS, we have mach object (mach-o) as the container format. Its distinctly different to ELF, and also the
> reason why Linux/BSD and macOS are sometimes substantially different, wrt to executable packaging and linking.

OK. So there is no macOS support here. That's fine -- I'm just trying to understand the status quo.

> 
> For windows we have Portable Executable (PE) as the container format.

This implies that the DWARF work is (unsurprisingly) completely inapplicable for Windows.

> Depending on how familiar you are with development on macOS, you might know the notion of dSYM folders,
> where macOS usually separate the application binary into the binary, and then stores the (d)ebug (SYM)bols in
> a separate folder. Those are iirc DWARF objects in the end.

This suggests to me that the DWARF work is applicable to the macOS use case, but much more work still needs to be done. OK.

Looking for more information, I checked the manual. And I found this: https://downloads.haskell.org/ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/debug-info.html  It's really helpful! And it suggests that I actually *can* do this on macOS. Perhaps that video will really happen after all.

Forgive the noise -- I should have checked the manual first. :)

Richard