Re: [PATCH] meson.build: Add --enable-use-pdb option

On 18.03.2026 22:18, Steve Aarnio wrote:
> This option will (attempt to) modify the QEMU compile and link flags to
> emit PDB symbol files rather than the standard (DWARF?) symbol output
> from gcc/clang.
> 
> This enables using native Windows debug tools (Windbg/Visual Studio) for
> debugging QEMU.

While the change looks good (but please don't use html or
quoted-printable encoding when sending patches), the name for
the option is a bit.. non-English, so to say.  It might be
--enable-pdb for example, or --use-pdb, but probably not
what's suggested initially.   There's one more possible issue
with this approach: when pdb isn't supported by the compiler,
this option is silently ignored, instead of giving some
useful diagnostics.

Overall, I think there's no need to have separate option especially
for pdb, - it can be enabled on windows when --enable-debug is
specified (or is it --debug? I don't remember).

This code:

option_cflags = (get_option('debug') ? ['-g'] : [])

can be extended to add the necessary compiler options.

Thanks,

/mjt

> Signed-off-by: Steve Aarnio <[email protected]>
> ---
>   meson.build       | 5 +++++
>   meson_options.txt | 2 ++
>   2 files changed, 7 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/meson.build b/meson.build
> index d7c4095b39..d27581e0c2 100644
> --- a/meson.build
> +++ b/meson.build
> @@ -692,6 +692,11 @@ endif
>   qemu_common_flags += hardening_flags
> +if get_option('debug') and get_option('use_pdb')
> +  qemu_common_flags += cc.get_supported_arguments('-g','-gcodeview','- 
> gcolumn-info','-fno-omit-frame-pointer')
> +  qemu_ldflags += cc.get_supported_link_arguments('-g','-Wl,--pdb=')
> +endif
> +
>   # Collect warning flags we want to set, sorted alphabetically
>   warn_flags = [
>     # First enable interesting warnings
> diff --git a/meson_options.txt b/meson_options.txt
> index 31d5916cfc..b1f3250d5c 100644
> --- a/meson_options.txt
> +++ b/meson_options.txt
> @@ -372,6 +372,8 @@ option('debug_stack_usage', type: 'boolean', value: 
> false,
>          description: 'measure coroutine stack usage')
>   option('qom_cast_debug', type: 'boolean', value: true,
>          description: 'cast debugging support')
> +option('use_pdb', type: 'boolean', value: false,
> +       description: 'use pdb symbol format on debug windows builds')
>   option('slirp_smbd', type : 'feature', value : 'auto',
>          description: 'use smbd (at path --smbd=*) in slirp networking')
> -- 
> 2.53.0
>