DWARF Extensions#

LLDB supports some DWARF extensions produced by Clang.

Clang -gmodules debug info#

On Darwin platforms, including Apple macOS and iOS, Clang can emit DWARF debug info for types found in Clang modules more efficiently.

From an on-disk storage perspective, Clang modules are precompiled header files that contain serialized Clang ASTs of all the declarations found in a Clang module. In traditional DWARF debug info, two object files that were built from sources that imported the same header file will both contain DWARF debug type info for types in that header file. This can lead to a lot of redundant debug info.

When Clang compiles a Clang module or precompiled header with the -gmodules option, the precompiled header (.pch) or module (.pcm) files become object file containers (on Darwin: Mach-O) that hold a __clang_ast section with the serialized Clang AST and various DWARF sections containing debug info for the type declarations found in the header or module.

This allows Clang to omit these type definitions from the object (.o) files and replace them with forward declarations to save space. Type declarations in a Clang module are nested inside one DW_TAG_module, or – in the case of submodules – multiple levels of DW_TAG_module. If a DWARF DIE needs to reference a type DIE from another module, Clang emits a forward declaration of the referenced DIE into a DW_TAG_module inside the same compile unit.

When a consumer sees a forward declaration that is nested inside a DW_TAG_module, it knows that it can find the full type declaration in an external .pcm or .pch file. To facilitate locating these external dependencies, Clang emits skeleton CUs into each object file that references external modules. Clang uses the same mechanism that is used to locate external .dwo files on ELF-based platforms. The DW_AT_GNU_dwo_name contains the absolute path to the .pcm file, and the DW_AT_GNU_dwo_id is a hash of the contents that is repeated in the DW_TAG_compile_unit of the .pcm file.

For example:

M.h

struct A {
  int x;
};

M.pcm

DW_TAG_compile_unit
  DW_AT_GNU_dwo_id  (0xabcdef)
  DW_TAG_module
    DW_AT_name "M"
    DW_TAG_structure
      DW_AT_name "A"
      DW_TAG_member
        DW_AT_name "x"

A.c

A a;

A.o

DW_TAG_compile_unit
  DW_TAG_module
    DW_AT_name "M"
    DW_TAG_structure
      DW_AT_name "A"
      DW_AT_declaration (true)
  DW_TAG_variable
    DW_AT_name "a"
    DW_AT_type (local ref to fwd decl "A")

DW_TAG_compile_unit
  DW_AT_GNU_dwo_id  (0xabcdef)
  DW_AT_GNU_dwo_name    ("M.pcm")

The debug info inside a .pcm file may recursively reference further external types that are defined in other .pcm files. Clang generates external references (and debug info inside the modules) for the following types:

C:

  • struct

  • union

  • enum

  • typedef

Objective-C:

  • all the C types listed above

  • @interface

C++:

  • all the C types listed above

  • namespace

  • any explicit extern template specializations

LLDB supports this DWARF extension only when debugging from .o files. The dsymutil debug info linker also understands this format and will resolve all module type references to point straight to the underlying defining declaration. Because of this a .dSYM bundle will never contain any -gmodules-style references.

Apple SDK information#

Clang and the Swift compiler emit information about the Xcode SDK that was used to build a translation unit into the DW_TAG_compile_unit. The DW_AT_LLVM_sysroot attribute points to the SDK root (equivalent to Clang’s -isysroot option). The DW_AT_APPLE_sdk attribute contains the name of the SDK, for example MacOSX.sdk.

Objective-C runtime#

Clang emits the Objective-C runtime version into the DW_TAG_compile_unit using the DW_AT_APPLE_major_runtime_version attribute. The value 2 stands for Objective-C 2.0.