Re: Forgot to note

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at delorie dot com>]

> From: Daniel Berlin <dberlin@redhat.com>
> Date: 10 Oct 2000 20:38:50 -0400
> 
> When the C++ abi moves to the new-abi, I can't fix stabs support
> without either adding a whole bunch of cruft, or making it not support
> the old ABI.
> 
> This is because things like gdb_mangle_name have to be changed to
> handle the new mangling scheme.
> So I have to either detect whether we have old-abi or new-abi
> somewhere, and then add a whole bunch of "if gnu-new-abi" type
> statements, or stop supporting the old abi for stabs/C++.
[snip]
> What should we do?
> Not support new-abi/stabs?
> Not support old-abi/stabs?
> Support both? (this is a not insignificant amount of work).

Sorry, I'm not privy enough to the C++ ABI issues, so I'm not sure I
understand the implications of the ABI change for the platforms I'm
interested in.  Could you say a few more words about this?

For instance, it is not clear to me whether the ABI change will affect
all platforms that use G++, or is this dependent on the executable
format which GCC/Binutils are congfigured to support.  Specifically,
what about non-dwarf platforms such as COFF and stabs?

Assuming that this affects all platforms, discontinuing the support
for the old ABI looks at first sight as a rather drastic and
user-unfriendly move.