DWARF v5 introduces DW_AT_call_all_calls, a subprogram attribute which
indicates that all calls (both regular and tail) within the subprogram
have call site entries. The information within these call site entries
can be used by a debugger to populate backtraces with synthetic tail
call frames.
Tail calling frames go missing in backtraces because the frame of the
caller is reused by the callee. Call site entries allow a debugger to
reconstruct a sequence of (tail) calls which led from one function to
another. This improves backtrace quality. There are limitations: tail
recursion isn't handled, variables within synthetic frames may not
survive to be inspected, etc. This approach is not novel, see:
https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/summit2010?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=jelinek.pdf
This patch adds an IR-level flag (DIFlagAllCallsDescribed) which lowers
to DW_AT_call_all_calls. It adds the minimal amount of DWARF generation
support needed to emit standards-compliant call site entries. For easier
deployment, when the debugger tuning is LLDB, the DWARF requirement is
adjusted to v4.
Testing: Apart from check-{llvm, clang}, I built a stage2 RelWithDebInfo
clang binary. Its dSYM passed verification and grew by 1.4% compared to
the baseline. 151,879 call site entries were added.
rdar://42001377
Sorry for the late question, but is the first operand always the callee in a call instruction? That's not true for WebAssembly, but I'm wondering if WebAssembly is an exception and this holds for all other targets.