Debugging mingw executables with msvc 2005 ?

[Ralf Habacker]

Hi all,

there was a question around, that is would be able to debug gcc  created
applications with Visual C++ Express 2005.
After some research I found out that gcc would be able to create coff
debug infos, which are readable by VC 6, but not in newer versions.

See the following threads.
    * Building binaries with Common Object File Format (COFF) symbols is
not supported in Visual C++ .NET 2003 and in Visual C++ 2005
(http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B888328&x=3&y=7)
    * Description of the .PDB files and of the .DBG files
(http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B121366&x=15&y=18)

It looks that the way to make the vs debugger able to read gcc provided 
symbols would be to create a replacement for msdiaxx.dll (which provides 
the Debug Interface Access API ) with code reading debug format gcc is 
able to create. This will be only possible, when the DIA is really used 
by the debugger and not passed over in some cases.

There is an example file for accessing the dia in
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/b5ke49f5(VS.80).aspx, but it
couldn't compiled without the DIA SDK.

    * Debugging with the DIA SDK
(http://www.vsj.co.uk/dotnet/display.asp?id=320)


This is just for info

Ralf