Currently, the interface between the DWARF index, libdwfl, and the code
which finds and reports vmlinux/kernel modules is spaghetti. The DWARF
index tracks Dwfl_Modules via their userdata. However, despite
conceptually being owned by the DWARF index, the reporting code reports
the Dwfl_Modules and sets up the userdata. These Dwfl_Modules and
drgn_dwfl_module_userdatas are messy to track and pass between the
layers.
This reworks the architecture so that the DWARF index owns the Dwfl
instance and files are reported to the DWARF index; the DWARF index
takes care of reporting to libdwfl internally. In addition to making the
interface for the reporter much cleaner, this improves a few things as a
side-effect:
- We now deduplicate on build ID in addition to path.
- We now skip searching for vmlinux and/or kernel modules if they were
already indexed.
- We now support compressed ELF files via libdwelf.
- We can now load default debug info at the same time as additional
debug info.
struct drgn_symbol doesn't really represent a symbol; it's just an
object which hasn't been fully initialized (see c2be52dff0 ("libdrgn:
rename object index to symbol index"), it used to be called a "partial
object"). For stack traces, we're going to have a notion of a symbol
that more closely represents an ELF symbol, so let's get rid of the
temporary struct drgn_symbol representation and just return an object
directly.
Similar to "libdrgn: make memory reader pluggable with callbacks", we
want to support custom type indexes (imagine, e.g., using drgn to parse
a binary format). For now, this disables the dwarf index tests; we'll
have a better way to test them later, so let's not bother adding more
test scaffolding.
The declaration file name of a DIE depends on the compilation directory,
which may not always be what the user expects. Instead, make the search
match as long as the full declaration file name ends with the given file
name. This is more convenient and more intuitive.
The current mixed Python/C implementation works well, but it has a
couple of important limitations:
- It's too slow for some common use cases, like iterating over large
data structures.
- It can't be reused in utilities written in other languages.
This replaces the internals with a new library written in C, libdrgn. It
includes Python bindings with mostly the same public interface as
before, with some important improvements:
- Types are now represented by a single Type class rather than the messy
polymorphism in the Python implementation.
- Qualifiers are a bitmask instead of a set of strings.
- Bit fields are not considered a separate type.
- The lvalue/rvalue terminology is replaced with reference/value.
- Structure, union, and array values are better supported.
- Function objects are supported.
- Program distinguishes between lookups of variables, constants, and
functions.
The C rewrite is about 6x as fast as the original Python when using the
Python bindings, and about 8x when using the C API directly.
Currently, the exposed API in C is fairly conservative. In the future,
the memory reader, type index, and object index APIs will probably be
exposed for more flexibility.
