I've been noticing some instances of const_type and the like having a name attribute. (This comes up in the elfutils build on F-11/x86_64.) At least in C and C++, this is suspicious compiler behavior. The various "modifier" and "qualifier" sorts of DW_TAG_*_type never get their own names in C/C++ syntax.

Only struct/class/union (DW_TAG_{structure,class,union}_type) have their own names, or DW_TAG_base_type. When you write "const foo" in C, it's whatever DIE describes "foo" (sans const) that has a name, and then the "const foo" DIE is just a <const_type type="#foo"/> with no other attributes. In these languages, the only way you associate a name with one of these types is with typedef, but that is a named DW_TAG_typedef pointing at the DIE that is const_type or whatever.

This applies to:

array_type pointer_type reference_type ptr_to_member_type const_type volatile_type restrict_type rvalue_reference_type

and perhaps other *_type but I think the ones I omitted never appear in C/C++. I don't know the rules for other languages. For these sorts of high-level tests, dwarflint should be set up to categorize them by the DW_AT_language code of the CU. For now it is probably wisest to default all languages to the C/C++ rules and we can hone it later after encountering actual data for other languages. But I'm suggesting that you structure it as language-sensitive now, rather than just removing name from the "expected optional" attributes for these tags generically. I'd leave the generic checks to match the DWARF spec reference tables, and then layer on the more-specific per-language checks as well.

At least with gcc-4.4.1-2.fc11.x86_64 you should get a few hits for these checks just on the elfutils build itself.

Thanks, Roland