Issue 161109.1: No way to describe Fortran derived types with deferred length components

Author:	Jakub Jelinek
Champion:	Jakub Jelinek
Date submitted:	2016-11-09
Date revised:
Date closed:
Type:	Error
Status:	Incomplete
DWARF Version:	6

Section 5.11, pg 126

When the producer implements Fortran derived type components with deferred length, e.g.

type t
  integer :: j
  character(len=:), allocatable :: f
  integer :: i
end type

like in C:

struct t
{
  int j;
  void *f;
  int i;
  int _f_length; // The string length *f points to.
};

the current DWARF doesn't really allow to express this, at least not in the type DIEs and their children (basically, for each variable of such type one would have to create a new distinct set of type DIEs where the DW_AT_string_length attribute would use a particular location expression specific to the particular variable.

The problem is that the string length is not stored in the CHARACTER(len=:) objects themselves, but is shared by all the elements of the array. The DW_AT_string_length must appear on the DW_TAG_string_type DIE, so DW_OP_push_object_address on it pushes the address of a particular array element. Where one can evaluate the string length is the DW_TAG_array_type, where one could DW_OP_push_object_address, and is used for DW_AT_data_location etc. We could e.g. allow DW_AT_string_length on DW_AT_array_type and have some form of DW_AT_string_length or some new attribute on DW_TAG_string_type say that DW_AT_string_length location isn't provided here, but on the parent (or grand parent etc.) DW_TAG_array_type. Or have some DW_OP_* that would push address of the containing array object instead of the current object's address.

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12/06/2016 -- Defer to DWARF Version 6.