RFC: Should -fplugin and -fplugin-arg options be excluded from DW_AT_producer recording?
Project / Subsystem
gcc / rfc
Date
2026-08-12
Proposer
Jaihind Yadav <jaihindy@qti.qualcomm.com>
Source type
public_inbox
Consensus
Proposed
Sentiment
—/10
Technical tradeoffs
- • Improves reproducibility by removing host-specific paths from DW_AT_producer.
- • Reduces the provenance information available in DW_AT_producer regarding plugin usage.
All attributes
- project
- gcc
- subsystem
- rfc
- patch_id
- —
- discussion_id
- CY5PR02MB899172AD2B298297BCE46F73E2DC2@CY5PR02MB8991.namprd02.prod.outlook.com
- source_type
- public_inbox
- title
- RFC: Should -fplugin and -fplugin-arg options be excluded from DW_AT_producer recording?
- headline
- RFC: Exclude -fplugin and -fplugin-arg from DW_AT_producer
- tldr
- Proposes excluding -fplugin and -fplugin-arg options from DW_AT_producer debug metadata to improve reproducibility.
- proposer
- Jaihind Yadav <jaihindy@qti.qualcomm.com>
- consensus
- Proposed
- outcome
- proposed
- sentiment_score
- —
- technical_tradeoffs
-
- • Improves reproducibility by removing host-specific paths from DW_AT_producer.
- • Reduces the provenance information available in DW_AT_producer regarding plugin usage.
- series_id
- —
- series_role
- standalone
- series_parts
- []
- tags
-
- • gcc
- • dwarf
- • debugging
- • reproducibility
- bugzilla_url
- —
- date
- 2026-08-12T00:00:00.000Z
RFC: Should -fplugin and -fplugin-arg options be excluded from DW_AT_producer recording?
This RFC proposes excluding -fplugin and -fplugin-arg options from the DW_AT_producer debug metadata. Currently, these options can embed absolute, host-specific plugin paths into object files, harming reproducibility. The author suggests using the existing NoDWARFRecord mechanism to prevent this, as has been done for other path-containing options. The tradeoff is between improved reproducibility and slightly reduced debugging information provenance.