Laz win32: my baseline mostly is fpc3.2, dwarf3 and gdb8.2 (with fpdebug).
Stability and speed are good.
Stepping with gdb8.2 is definitely faster than gdb7.7.1.
I go back to gdb7.7.1 only in special case:
if source code has interface variables, which is known:
https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=35129About dwarf2 vs. dwarf3:
Regardless of gdb version, dwarf2 is needed sometimes for watching
( oldstyle object), but I'm not aware of unreported dwarf3 issues.
And dwarf2 is needed for regular Laz2.0.4, because it has not the
fix for dwarf3 issue 0035405 ( here I found another (unreported) effect:
The exception classname can be faulty. If the exception is registered
in the ignorelist, it won't be found there, thus not ignored.)