Need further build instructions for included lldb

[Hexadecimaaal]

I'm looking into updating this plugin in the https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs repo from 1.6.10 to 1.7.0. The other parts of updating dependencies and package itself, some minor build scripting change, that is already done; I do have a (somewhat) working plugin 1.7.0 in nixos hierarchy.

Now there's one large problem impeding: in 1.7.0 the lldb this plugin use changed from version 12 to 14. I haven't been able to find the source for the lldb that this plugin ships with in other systems. Only version 12 is available under https://github.com/vadimcn/llvm-project. I tried to build the plugin with upstream https://github.com/rust-lang/llvm-project, and it did partially work, but the rust support is very much botched (you lose all the formatting, enum variant support, etc). I do rely on the rust support, and I wish to help maintaining it (in nixpkgs).

The building instruction simply suggests the user to reuse the binary distribution, involving spinning up a vscode plugin loading environment:

This is a zip archive containing the subset of LLDB files which CodeLLDB needs at runtime.

Building a minimal self-contained LLDB package is rather tricky, I recommend just zipping up the contents of /.vscode/extensions/vadimcn.vscode-lldb-/lldb directory from an existing CodeLLDB installation.

If you choose to build LLVM from source, it is usually sufficient to include in the archive bin and lib subdirectories from build output.

While this is fine for most users on other system configuration (that uses FHS), it's still somewhat out of my option. This probably could be done in nixpkgs, but is nonetheless extremely fiddly, decidedly fragile, and subpar in terms of reproducibility (which is of the principle idea for even using nix at all). The original derivation for codelldb was surprisingly simple, it only involves replacing the much better maintained mainline lldb derivation's source input.

So, it would be nice if we can have updated sources of codelldb, of version 14, maybe in https://github.com/vadimcn/llvm-project? Or if we can have instructions of acquiring or patching some source? If there's any sort of obstacle in publishing the source, I would be glad to offer all the help I could have.

references:

• last update: Upgraded vscode-extension-vadimcn-vscode-lldb to the latest version NixOS/nixpkgs#158299
• possibly related issues:
  • vscode-lldb: Switch to LLDB from LLVM 13 NixOS/nixpkgs#143256
  • codelldb inside of vscode-lldb extension doesn't work NixOS/nixpkgs#160874
  • Rust now emits with a new PDB language identifier, breaking debugging on Windows #633