Issue 031203.1: Objective C Language Codes

Author: Jason Molenda
Champion: Jason Molenda
Date submitted: 2003-12-03
Date revised:
Date closed:
Type: Extension
Status: Accepted
DWARF Version: 3
At Apple we have a variant of C, Objective-C, which has been in use for
a decade or so.  We also have a beastie called Objective-C++ which is
Objective-C and C++ all in one glorious package.  Our debugger, gdb,
needs to know when it is dealing with an Objective-C or Objective-C++
function.  Objective-C is included in the standard GCC distribution;
Objective-C++ is currently only in our version of GCC.

Based on Draft 8 of the DWARF3 standard (2001-11-19), here's my
proposed addition.


=== SUMMARY

Add language identifier to support the Objective-C and Objective-C++
languages, used primarily, but not exclusively, on the MacOS X
operating system.

=== PROPOSED ADDITIONS

Add to Figure 8 ["Language Names"; 3.1.1, pp. 36-67]:

   DW_LANG_ObjC            Objective-C
   DW_LANG_ObjC_plus_plus  Objective-C++

Add to Figure 27 ["Language encodings"; 7.12, p. 143]:

   DW_LANG_ObjC            0x0010
   DW_LANG_ObjC_plus_plus  0x0011




There is quite a substantial amount of code written in Objective-C and
Objective-C++, so getting the language codes defined from the beginning
would be very helpful. :-)