.debug$S and .debug$T sections in COFF obj files

[jonwil]

Is there any documentation on the layout of the .debug$S and .debug$T sections in COFF obj files (as output by the C++ compiler in Visual Studio 2015 specifically) and which of the data structures (from the PDB documentation in this repo or the Windows SDK headers or whatever else) I need if I want to parse this information?

I have read the stuff in this repo but I cant see anything related to .debug$S or .debug$T and I have read the PE COFF specs but they only say "contains debugging information" with no details on their format.

[skochinsky]

See the description of $$SYMBOLS and $$TYPES in the Microsoft Symbol and Type Information
doc.
There is some additional description in the "VC5.0 Symbolic Debug Information" article available in old MSDN releases. I have an unfinished conversion to Markdown here: https://gist.github.com/skochinsky/2d73bba6bbf9692614cb.
It also references the prior "CV4 Symbolic Debug Information Specification", but I haven't seen a copy of that anywhere (possibly it only exists on paper).

[jonwil]

Ended up finding the information I needed in the (released parts of) the source code for cvdump.exe.

[Acu43]

@jonwil Can you share the information you found?

I'm trying to understand the exact layout of .debug$T section.

[jonwil]

I can't remember what information I found.

[zjturner]

@Acu43 i wrote all of the PDB code in clang, and I'm pretty sure I understand every detail, nook, and crannie of the .debug$T section. I'm happy to answer any questions, but please move the discussion to the llvm-dev mailing list as nowadays it's a much more complete source of truth than this repo (we basically can do everything that the code in this repo can do, plus much more).