What's the proper way to debug D programs with GDB?

[grauzone]

Robert Clipsham wrote:
> On 12/03/10 16:34, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm trying to debug some random crashes of some D services running on a
>> Linux headless server.
>> I have compiled/linked my programs and Phobos with -g and without -O
>> (using DMD), and applied the gdb patches from
>> http://dsource.org/projects/gdb-patches/ .
>> I'm running a script based on
>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Backtrace#Summary%20in%20script%20form to
>> automatically record the backtrace and restart the program.
>> However, gdb still doesn't print very nice backtraces. Here's an example
>> output:
>>
>>
>> [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
>> [New Thread 0xf75506d0 (LWP 29591)]
>> Die: DW_TAG_<unknown> (abbrev = 9, offset = 449149)
>> has children: FALSE
>> attributes:
>> DW_AT_byte_size (DW_FORM_data1) constant: 8
>> DW_AT_type (DW_FORM_ref4) constant ref: 449143 (adjusted)
>> Dwarf Error: Cannot find type of die [in module
>> /home/wnbot/wahostbot/HostingBuddy]
>> #0 0x080a72aa in _aaIn (aa={a = 0xf7461410}, keyti=0x8136969) at
>> internal/aaA.d:253
>> pkey = (void *) 0xff9439d8
>> len = 97
>> key_hash = 145249
>> i = 40
>> e = (struct aaA.aaA *) 0x180002
>> c = 50Die: DW_TAG_<unknown> (abbrev = 4, offset = 52531)
>> has children: FALSE
>> attributes:
>> DW_AT_byte_size (DW_FORM_data1) constant: 8
>> DW_AT_type (DW_FORM_ref4) constant ref: 52523 (adjusted)
>>
>> Dwarf Error: Cannot find type of die [in module
>> /home/wnbot/wahostbot/HostingBuddy]
>>
>>
>> So, what's the proper way to set up D debugging on Linux? Should I just
>> look into gdc?
>>
>>
> 
> It seems dmd is producing bad debug info here, you should report a bug 
> if you can narrow it down to a test case which still does that. I've 
> never had a problem using ldc with gdb and gdb-patches, so you could try 
> that if you're using D1/Tango. Otherwise I don't know what to suggest, 
> until the dmd bug is fixed... Other people have had similar problems, so 
> if you manage to get a test case that you can put in bugzilla it might 
> catch Walter's attention, getting gdb playing nicely with D seems to be 
> important to him :)

dmd producing buggy debugging information seems to be an old problem:
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1079