[DynInst_API:] Converting libdwarf use to libdw?

[Josh Stone <jistone@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

Has anyone in the project ever considered moving from libdwarf to
elfutils' libdw?

My perspective is admittedly skewed, but in the land of RHEL+Fedora
you're already using libelf from elfutils, so using libdw too seems like
a good choice.  Plus, while libdwarf is available on Fedora, it's not in
any RHEL 4-6, so removing an external dependency would be good.  That
RHEL maintenance also impacts how well the libraries will support new
DWARF versions and extensions in RHEL and Fedora, like the new dwz
compression:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DwarfCompressor
http://www.dwarfstd.org/ShowIssue.php?issue=120604.1

AFAIK elfutils is well supported on most Linux distros.  But I'm not
sure about completely different OSes using DWARF (I think not), so your
opinions on which ones matter to you and how they fare here would be
appreciated.

The APIs of libdwarf and libdw are similar, but I think not quite
possible as drop-in replacements.  So while a port would probably be
straightforward, there would need to be some kind of shim if you want to
maintain support for both libraries.

I'm interested to do this work if it is deemed welcome.  Please let me
know what you think and how you'd like to proceed.

Thanks,
Josh