[Mono-list] VBNC in Mono.

[Kornél Pál]

Hi,

> This will work for code that we can directly modify, and in this
> particular case, I think it would be great to get these patches into
> vbnc, as that way we could get VBNC debugging once it bootstraps on
> Mono.

When vbnc is executed on Mono it is using Mono's SRE that will generate mdb 
files by default without any hack needed. So using a custom symbol writer is 
only useful when you want to generate mdb files on MS.NET.

> The pdb to mdb transformation tool that Robert wrote has the advantage
> that we can use with proprietary compilers and for existing binaries
> that ship with a pdb, but no source.


This tool can be used for vbnc as well until it bootstraps on Mono after 
that vbnc on Mono will generate mdb files by default using SRE so there will 
be no need for conversion.

But as you said the tool itself is very useful for binaries without source 
so I think we should have such a tool in SVN (and an mdb2pdb tool would be 
useful as well).

>> I've done a lot of work on SymbolWriter to make it compatible with 
>> MS.NET. I
>> think the modifications I've done eventually should go into
>> Mono.CompilerServices.SymbolWriter.dll but that needs some cleanup and
>> modifications in SRE as well.
>
> I agree;   Could you file a bug report with this patch, so we do not
> forget about it?   I know Martin -which would review this patch- is
> currently busy with a few other bugs.

I'll do some cleanup on the code and then I'll post the patch to bugzilla.

Kornél