pr34322: assertion failure in get_or_create_member_type

← All discussions

Project / Subsystem

binutils / pr34322

Date

2026-07-04

Proposer

Alan Modra <amodra@gmail.com>

Source type

public_inbox

Consensus

Proposed

Sentiment

—/10

Technical tradeoffs

• Silently ignoring malformed DWARF entries instead of warning or erroring out simplifies parsing but might hide deeper issues in toolchains generating the DWARF data.

View thread →

All attributes

project: binutils
subsystem: pr34322
patch_id: —
discussion_id: akjmq8Rm_OBgmsq3@squeak.grove.modra.org
source_type: public_inbox
title: pr34322: assertion failure in get_or_create_member_type
headline: pr34322: assertion failure in get_or_create_member_type
tldr: Fixes a bug in binutils' DWARF processing that caused an assertion failure when encountering DW_TAG_member without a proper struct/union parent.
proposer: Alan Modra <amodra@gmail.com>
consensus: Proposed
outcome: proposed
sentiment_score: —
technical_tradeoffs: • Silently ignoring malformed DWARF entries instead of warning or erroring out simplifies parsing but might hide deeper issues in toolchains generating the DWARF data.
series_id: —
series_role: standalone
series_parts: []
tags: • binutils
• dwarf
• debugging
• bugfix
url: https://inbox.sourceware.org/binutils/akjmq8Rm_OBgmsq3@squeak.grove.modra.org
bugzilla_url: —
date: 2026-07-04T00:00:00.000Z

pr34322: assertion failure in get_or_create_member_type

This patch addresses PR 34322 by modifying binutils’ DWARF parsing logic. Specifically, it changes get_or_create_member_type to return NULL if the parent is NULL, and insert_element_in_list to ignore DW_TAG_member entries that lack a struct or union parent. This prevents an assertion failure and ensures malformed DWARF information is handled more gracefully.