COFF problems

[Girish G <girishg at india dot ti dot com>]

Hi,
I had a few problems with differences between 2 COFF formats 
for ARM processor, one for Texas Instruments and the other for GNU. My
initial problems were posted to  comp.compilers
My problems have changed a bit but I still have some problems. Going
through the original problem would help hence I put that down first

We have two different compiler toolsets, for ARM7-TDMI.  One, provided
by GNU, the other, by Texas Instruments(TI).  We are working on a TI
chipset having ARM and to work on this, we have a full Windows based
IDE (code composer studio). Now, we need to write a BSP for this
chipset to run vxWorks RTOS. We have the Windriver libraries for this
particular purpose. These libraries have been generated using GNU
tools, which, unfortunately TI tools refuse to recognize. This we have
realized to be caused due to differences between GNU COFF and TI
COFF. We have written a utility to convert GNU COFF to TI COFF
accordingly. Using this conversion utility on the executable generated
by GNU tools, we are able to load and run the program using TI
tools. However, even after this, we are unable to obtain source code
debug information from the GNU COFF. Could someone please help us on
this aspect. We need help regarding the differences between the ways
in which GNU tools and TI tools put debugging information in the
executable/object files. Please help.

I have a few pages of interest. I went thru these but could not find
much information. However, I will put these links here hoping someone
will find something of help to us
 

http://www.mit.edu:8001/afs/athena.mit.edu/software/cygnus/cygnus-97r2/www/2_cc/gcc/ccOptions_for_Debugging_Your_Progr.html

Now, we have found that our version of GNU for ARM does not produce file name information when we compile with -gcoff option.
(gcc driver version 2.7.9-970819 egcs-971225 tornado 2.0 executing gcc version 2.7.9-970819)
Our tools understand COFF debug format, hence we want this debug format in particular. It also seems as though our tools support DWARF specification but the GNU tools fail to generate debug info in DWARF format.

(when I try to pass this option, it says
                cc1: warning: `-gdwarf' not supported by this configuration of GCC
)

So, is there any patch for gcc to generate correct debug information with -gcoff flag? Or with -gdwarf for that matter?

Any other suggestions would also be welcome

Thanks and regards
-- Girish