# Debug Generation
Application developers spend a significant time debugging the applications that
they create. Hence it is important that a compiler provide support for a good
debug experience. DWARF[1] is the standard debugging file format used by
compilers and debuggers. The LLVM infrastructure supports debug info generation
using metadata[2]. Support for generating debug metadata is present
in MLIR by way of MLIR attributes. Flang can leverage these MLIR attributes to
generate good debug information.
We can break the work for debug generation into two separate tasks:
1) Line Table generation
2) Full debug generation
The support for Fortran Debug in LLVM infrastructure[3] has made great progress
due to many Fortran frontends adopting LLVM as the backend as well as the
availability of the Classic Flang compiler.
## Driver Flags
By default, Flang will not generate any debug or linetable information.
Debug information will be generated if the following flags are present.
-gline-tables-only, -g1 : Emit debug line number tables only
-g : Emit full debug info
## Line Table Generation
There is existing AddDebugFoundationPass which add `FusedLoc` with a
`SubprogramAttr` on FuncOp. This allows MLIR to generate LLVM IR metadata
for that function. However, following values are hardcoded at the moment. These
will instead be passed from the driver.
- Details of the compiler (name and version and git hash).
- Language Standard. We can set it to Fortran95 for now and periodically
revise it when full support for later standards is available.
- Optimisation Level.
- Type of debug generated (linetable/full debug).
- Calling Convention: `DW_CC_normal` by default and `DW_CC_program` if it is
the main program.
`DISubroutineTypeAttr` currently has a fixed type. This will be changed to
match the signature of the actual function/subroutine.
## Full Debug Generation
Full debug info will include metadata to describe functions, variables and
types. Flang will generate debug metadata in the form of MLIR attributes. These
attributes will be converted to the format expected by LLVM IR in DebugTranslation[4].
Debug metadata generation can be broken down in 2 steps.
1. MLIR attributes are generated by reading information from AST or FIR. This
step can happen anytime before or during conversion to LLVM dialect. An example
of the metadata generated in this step is `DILocalVariableAttr` or
`DIDerivedTypeAttr`.
2. Changes that can only happen during or after conversion to LLVM dialect. The
example of this is passing `DIGlobalVariableExpressionAttr` while
creating `LLVM::GlobalOp`. Another example will be generation of `DbgDeclareOp`
that is required for local variables. It can only be created after conversion to
LLVM dialect as it requires LLVM.Ptr type. The changes required for step 2 are
quite minimal. The bulk of the work happens in step 1.
One design decision that we need to make is to decide where to perform step 1.
Here are some possible options:
**During conversion to LLVM dialect**
Pros:
1. Do step 1 and 2 in one place.
2. No chance of missing any change introduced by an earlier transformation.
Cons:
1. Passing a lot of information from the driver as discussed in the line table
section above may muddle interface of FIRToLLVMConversion.
2. `DeclareOp` is removed before this pass.
3. Even if `DeclareOp` is retained, creating debug metadata while some ops have
been converted to LLVMdialect and others are not may cause its own issues. We
have to walk the ops chain to extract the information which may be problematic
in this case.
4. Some source information is lost by this point. Examples include
information about namelists, source line information about field of derived
types etc.
**During a pass before conversion to LLVM dialect**
This is similar to what AddDebugFoundationPass is currently doing.
Pros:
1. One central location dedicated to debug information processing. This can
result in a cleaner implementation.
2. Similar to above, less chance of missing any change introduced by an earlier
transformation.
Cons:
1. Step 2 still need to happen during conversion to LLVM dialect. But
changes required for step 2 are quite minimal.
2. Similar to above, some source information may be lost by this point.
**During Lowering from AST**
Pros
1. We have better source information.
Cons:
1. There may be change in the code after lowering which may not be
reflected in debug information.
2. Comments on an earlier PR [5] advised against this approach.
## Design
The design below assumes that we are extracting the information from FIR.
If we generate debug metadata during lowering then the description below
may need to change. Although the generated metadata remains the same in
both cases.
The AddDebugFoundationPass will be renamed to AddDebugInfo Pass. The
information mentioned in the line info section above will be passed to it from
the driver. This pass will run quite late in the pipeline but before
`DeclareOp` is removed.
In this pass, we will iterate through the `GlobalOp`, `TypeInfoOp`, `FuncOp`
and `DeclareOp` to extract the source information and build the MLIR
attributes. A class will be added to handle conversion of MLIR and FIR types to
`DITypeAttr`.
Following sections provide details of how various language constructs will be
handled. In these sections, the LLVM IR metadata and MLIR attributes have been
used interchangeably. As an example, `DILocalVariableAttr` is an MLIR attribute
which gets translated to LLVM IR's `DILocalVariable`.
### Variables
#### Local Variables
In MLIR, local variables are represented by `DILocalVariableAttr` which
stores information like source location and type. They also require a
`DbgDeclareOp` which binds `DILocalVariableAttr` with a location.
In FIR, `DeclareOp` has source information about the variable. The
`DeclareOp` will be processed to create `DILocalVariableAttr`. This attr is
attached to the memref op of the `DeclareOp` using a `FusedLoc` approach.
During conversion to LLVM dialect, when an op is encountered that has a
`DILocalVariableAttr` in its `FusedLoc`, a `DbgDeclareOp` is created which
binds the attr with its location.
The change in the IR look like as follows:
```
original fir
%2 = fir.alloca i32 loc(#loc4)
%3 = fir.declare %2 {uniq_name = "_QMhelperFchangeEi"}
Fir with FusedLoc.
%2 = fir.alloca i32 loc(#loc38)
%3 = fir.declare %2 {uniq_name = "_QMhelperFchangeEi"}
#di_local_variable5 = #llvm.di_local_variable<name = "i", line = 5, type = #di_basic_type ... >
#loc38 = loc(fused<#di_local_variable5>[#loc4])
After conversion to llvm dialect
#di_local_variable = #llvm.di_local_variable<name = "i", line = 5, type = #di_basic_type ...>
%1 = llvm.alloca %0 x i64
llvm.intr.dbg.declare #di_local_variable = %1
```
#### Function Arguments
Arguments work in similar way, but they present a difficulty that `DeclareOp`'s
memref points to `BlockArgument`. Unlike the op in local variable case,
the `BlockArgument` are not handled by the FIRToLLVMLowering. This can easily
be handled by adding after conversion to LLVM dialect either in FIRToLLVMLowering
or in a separate pass.
### Module
In debug metadata, the Fortran module will be represented by `DIModuleAttr`.
The variables or functions inside module will have scope pointing to the parent module.
```
module helper
real glr
...
end module helper
!1 = !DICompileUnit(language: DW_LANG_Fortran90 ...)
!2 = !DIModule(scope: !1, name: "helper" ...)
!3 = !DIGlobalVariable(scope: !2, name: "glr" ...)
Use of a module results in the following metadata.
!4 = !DIImportedEntity(tag: DW_TAG_imported_module, entity: !2)
```
Modules are not first class entities in the FIR. So there is no way to get
the location where they are declared in source file.
But the information that a variable or function is part of a module
can be extracted from its mangled name along with name of the module. There is
a `GlobalOp` generated for each module variable in FIR and there is also a
`DeclareOp` in each function where the module variable is used.
We will use the `GlobalOp` to generate the `DIModuleAttr` and associated
`DIGlobalVariableAttr`. A `DeclareOp` for module variable will be used
to generate `DIImportedEntityAttr`. Care will be taken to avoid generating
duplicate `DIImportedEntityAttr` entries in same function.
### Derived Types
A derived type will be represented in metadata by `DICompositeType` with a tag of
`DW_TAG_structure_type`. It will have elements which point to the components.
```
type :: t_pair
integer :: i
real :: x
end type
!1 = !DICompositeType(tag: DW_TAG_structure_type, name: "t_pair", elements: !2 ...)
!2 = !{!3, !4}
!3 = !DIDerivedType(tag: DW_TAG_member, scope: !1, name: "i", size: 32, offset: 0, baseType: !5 ...)
!4 = !DIDerivedType(tag: DW_TAG_member, scope: !1, name: "x", size: 32, offset: 32, baseType: !6 ...)
!5 = !DIBasicType(tag: DW_TAG_base_type, name: "integer" ...)
!6 = !DIBasicType(tag: DW_TAG_base_type, name: "real" ...)
```
In FIR, `RecordType` and `TypeInfoOp` can be used to get information about the
location of the derived type and the types of its components. We may also use
`FusedLoc` on `TypeInfoOp` to encode location information for all the components
of the derived type.
### CommonBlocks
A common block will be represented in metadata by `DICommonBlockAttr` which
will be used as scope by the variable inside common block. `DIExpression`
can be used to give the offset of any given variable inside the global storage
for common block.
```
integer a, b
common /test/ a, b
;@test_ = common global [8 x i8] zeroinitializer, !dbg !5, !dbg !6
!1 = !DISubprogram()
!2 = !DICommonBlock(scope: !1, name: "test" ...)
!3 = !DIGlobalVariable(scope: !2, name: "a" ...)
!4 = !DIExpression()
!5 = !DIGlobalVariableExpression(var: !3, expr: !4)
!6 = !DIGlobalVariable(scope: !2, name: "b" ...)
!7 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_plus_uconst, 4)
!8 = !DIGlobalVariableExpression(var: !6, expr: !7)
```
In FIR, a common block results in a `GlobalOp` with common linkage. Every
function where the common block is used has `DeclareOp` for that variable.
This `DeclareOp` will point to global storage through
`CoordinateOp` and `AddrOfOp`. The `CoordinateOp` has the offset of the
location of this variable in global storage. There is enough information to
generate the required metadata. Although it requires walking up the chain from
`DeclaredOp` to locate `CoordinateOp` and `AddrOfOp`.
### Arrays
The type of fixed size array is represented using `DICompositeType`. The
`DISubrangeAttr` is used to provide bounds in any given dimensions.
```
integer abc(4,5)
!1 = !DICompositeType(tag: DW_TAG_array_type, baseType: !5, elements: !2 ...)
!2 = !{ !3, !4 }
!3 = !DISubrange(lowerBound: 1, upperBound: 4 ...)
!4 = !DISubrange(lowerBound: 1, upperBound: 5 ...)
!5 = !DIBasicType(tag: DW_TAG_base_type, name: "integer" ...)
```
#### Adjustable
The debug metadata for the adjustable array looks similar to fixed sized array
with one change. The bounds are not constant values but point to a
`DILocalVariableAttr`.
In FIR, the `DeclareOp` points to a `ShapeOp` and we can walk the chain
to get the value that represents the array bound in any dimension. We will
create a `DILocalVariableAttr` that will point to that location. This
variable will be used in the `DISubrangeAttr`. Note that this
`DILocalVariableAttr` does not correspond to any source variable.
#### Assumed Size
This is treated as raw array. Debug information will not provide any upper bound
information for the last dimension.
#### Assumed Shape
The assumed shape array will use the similar representation as fixed size
array but there will be 2 differences.
1. There will be a `datalocation` field which will be an expression. This will
enable debugger to get the data pointer from array descriptor.
2. The field in `DISubrangeAttr` for array bounds will be expression which will
allow the debugger to get the bounds from descriptor.
```
integer(4), intent(out) :: a(:,:)
!1 = !DICompositeType(tag: DW_TAG_array_type, baseType: !8, elements: !2, dataLocation: !3)
!2 = !{!5, !7}
!3 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_deref)
!4 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_plus_uconst, 32, DW_OP_deref)
!5 = !DISubrange(lowerBound: !1, upperBound: !4 ...)
!6 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_plus_uconst, 56, DW_OP_deref)
!7 = !DISubrange(lowerBound: !1, upperBound: !6, ...)
!8 = !DIBasicType(tag: DW_TAG_base_type, name: "integer" ...)
```
In assumed shape case, the rank can be determined from the FIR's `SequenceType`.
This allows us to generate a `DISubrangeAttr` in each dimension.
#### Assumed Rank
This is currently unsupported in flang. Its representation will be similar to
array representation for assumed shape array with the following difference.
1. `DICompositeTypeAttr` will have a rank field which will be an expression.
It will be used to get the rank value from descriptor.
2. Instead of `DISubrangeType` for each dimension, there will be a single
`DIGenericSubrange` which will allow debuggers to calculate bounds in any
dimension.
### Pointers and Allocatables
The pointer and allocatable will be represented using `DICompositeTypeAttr`. It
is quirk of DWARF that scalar allocatable or pointer variables will show up in
the debug info as pointer to scalar while array pointer or allocatable
variables show up as arrays. The behavior is same in gfortran and classic flang.
```
integer, allocatable :: ar(:)
integer, pointer :: sc
!1 = !DILocalVariable(name: "sc", type: !2)
!2 = !DIDerivedType(tag: DW_TAG_pointer_type, baseType: !3, associated: !9 ...)
!3 = !DIBasicType(tag: DW_TAG_base_type, name: "integer", ...)
!4 = !DILocalVariable(name: "ar", type: !5 ...)
!5 = !DICompositeType(tag: DW_TAG_array_type, baseType: !3, elements: !6, dataLocation: !8, allocated: !9)
!6 = !{!7}
!7 = !DISubrange(lowerBound: !10, upperBound: !11 ...)
!8 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_deref)
!9 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_deref, DW_OP_lit0, DW_OP_ne)
!10 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_plus_uconst, 24, DW_OP_deref)
!11 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_plus_uconst, 32, DW_OP_deref)
```
IN FIR, these variable are represent as <!fir.box<!fir.heap<>> or
fir.box<!fir.ptr<>>. There is also `allocatable` or `pointer` attribute on
the `DeclareOp`. This allows us to generate allocated/associated status of
these variables. The metadata to get the information from the descriptor is
similar to arrays.
### Strings
The `DIStringTypeAttr` can represent both fixed size and allocatable strings. For
the allocatable case, the `stringLengthExpression` and `stringLocationExpression`
are used to provide the length and the location of the string respectively.
```
character(len=:), allocatable :: var
character(len=20) :: fixed
!1 = !DILocalVariable(name: "var", type: !2)
!2 = !DIStringType(name: "character(*)", stringLengthExpression: !4, stringLocationExpression: !3 ...)
!3 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_deref)
!4 = !DIExpression(DW_OP_push_object_address, DW_OP_plus_uconst, 8)
!5 = !DILocalVariable(name: "fixed", type: !6)
!6 = !DIStringType(name: "character (20)", size: 160)
```
### Association
They will be treated like normal variables. Although we may require to handle
the case where the `DeclareOp` of one variable points to the `DeclareOp` of
another variable (e.g. a => b).
### Namelists
FIR does not seem to have a way to extract information about namelists.
```
namelist /abc/ x3, y3
(gdb) p abc
$1 = ( x3 = 100, y3 = 500 )
(gdb) p x3
$2 = 100
(gdb) p y3
$3 = 500
```
Even without namelist support, we should be able to see the value of the
individual variables like `x3` and `y3` in the above example. But we would not
be able to evaluate the namelist and have the debugger prints the value of all
the variables in it as shown above for `abc`.
## Missing metadata in MLIR
Some metadata types that are needed for fortran are present in LLVM IR but are
absent from MLIR. A non comprehensive list is given below.
1. `DICommonBlockAttr`
2. `DIGenericSubrangeAttr`
3. `DISubrangeAttr` in MLIR takes IntegerAttr at the moment so only works
with fixed sizes arrays. It needs to also accept `DIExpressionAttr` or
`DILocalVariableAttr` to support assumed shape and adjustable arrays.
4. The `DICompositeTypeAttr` will need to have field for `datalocation`,
`rank`, `allocated` and `associated`.
5. `DIStringTypeAttr`
# Testing
- LLVM LIT tests will be added to test:
- the driver and ensure that it passes the line table and full debug
info generation appropriately.
- that the pass works as expected and generates debug info. Test will be
with `fir-opt`.
- with `flang -fc1` that end-to-end debug info generation works.
- Manual external tests will be written to ensure that the following works
in debug tools
- Break at lines.
- Break at functions.
- print type (ptype) of function names.
- print values and types (ptype) of various type of variables
- Manually run `GDB`'s gdb.fortran testsuite with llvm-flang.
# Resources
- [1] https://dwarfstd.org/doc/DWARF5.pdf
- [2] https://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html#metadata
- [3] https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/llvm_fortran_debug/
- [4] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/mlir/lib/Target/LLVMIR/DebugTranslation.cpp
- [5] https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/84202
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