Issue 210305.1: Split DW_AT_language into DW_AT_language and DW_AT_language_version
Section 3.1.1, pg 61-63
Some of the DW_LANG_* language codes currently include a language version, usually
in the form of 2 digit suffix for the standard year. E.g.
DW_LANG_C_plus_plus
DW_LANG_C_plus_plus_03
DW_LANG_C_plus_plus_11
DW_LANG_C_plus_plus_14
the problem with this way is that any time new language codes are assigned for new
language versions of the same language, all consumers need to be updated to handle
those new language codes. Say if a consumer needs some special handling of C++11
or later, for DWARF5 it needs to look for DW_LANG_C_plus_plus_{11,14}, but in DWARF6
it would need to look for DW_LANG_C_plus_plus_{11,14,17,20} and maybe 23 too.
As DWARF5 has DW_FORM_implicit_const, adding new constants to the TUs isn't that
expensive, so I'd like to propose that we adjust DW_LANG_* codes and add an
optional DW_AT_language_version attribute. I think it would be best if the values
for DW_AT_language_version were YYYYMM decimal numbers when the particular standard
was finalized, so e.g. for C++ it would be 199711 for C++98, 201103 for C++11,
201402 for C++14, 201703 for C++17, 202002 for C++20, etc. This would mean consumers
then can check DW_AT_language value is DW_LANG_C_plus_plus and DW_AT_language_version
value >= 201103 etc.
In the DW_LANG_* table I'd suggest to add a column with implied default
DW_AT_language_version when that attribute is not explicitly specified.
Now, the DW_LANG_* table contains either unversioned names for some languages,
those would be kept as is, or an unversioned (typically oldest) + some versioned
ones, here I'd suggest to keep but deprecate the versioned ones and for other languages
there are only versioned ones, here I'd suggest to copy the oldest one to an unversioned
name (alias) and deprecate the versioned ones.
--
2021-07-19: Withdrawn. See 210419.1.
