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45 lines
2.0 KiB
45 lines
2.0 KiB
4 months ago
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Goals
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=====
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The current state of the art in open source debuggers are that they work in the
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common cases for C applications, but don't handle many "hard cases" properly.
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For example, C++ expression parsing, handling overloading, templates,
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multi-threading, and other non-trivial scenarios all work in some base cases,
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but don't work reliably.
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The goal of LLDB is to provide an amazing debugging experience that "just
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works". We aim to solve these long-standing problems where debuggers get
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confused, so that you can think about debugging your problem, not about
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deficiencies in the debugger.
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With a long view, there is no good reason for a debugger to reinvent its own
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C/C++ parser, type system, know all the target calling convention details,
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implement its own disassembler, etc. By using the existing libraries vended by
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the LLVM project, we believe that many of these problems will be defined away,
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and the debugger can focus on important issues like process control, efficient
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symbol reading and indexing, thread management, and other debugger-specific
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problems.
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Some more specific goals include:
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* Build libraries for inclusion in IDEs, command line tools, and other analysis
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tools
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* High performance and efficient memory use
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* Extensible: Python scriptable and use a plug-in architecture
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* Reuse existing compiler technology where it makes sense
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* Excellent multi-threaded debugging support
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* Great support for C, Objective-C and C++
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* Retargetable to support multiple platforms
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* Provide a base for debugger research and other innovation
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Why a New Debugger?
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-------------------
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In order to achieve our goals we decided to start with a fresh architecture
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that would support modern multi-threaded programs, handle debugging symbols in
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an efficient manner, use compiler based code knowledge and have plug-in support
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for functionality and extensions. Additionally we want the debugger
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capabilities to be available to other analysis tools, be they scripts or
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compiled programs, without requiring them to be GPL.
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