What are CFI directives in Gnu Assembler (GAS) used for?

Question

There seem to be a .CFI directive after every line and also there are wide varities of these ex.,.cfi_startproc , .cfi_endproc etc.. more here.

    .file   "temp.c"
    .text
.globl main
    .type   main, @function
main:
.LFB0:
    .cfi_startproc
    pushq   %rbp
    .cfi_def_cfa_offset 16
    movq    %rsp, %rbp
    .cfi_offset 6, -16
    .cfi_def_cfa_register 6
    movl    $0, %eax
    leave
    ret
    .cfi_endproc
.LFE0:
    .size   main, .-main
.globl func
    .type   func, @function
func:
.LFB1:
    .cfi_startproc
    pushq   %rbp
    .cfi_def_cfa_offset 16
    movq    %rsp, %rbp
    .cfi_offset 6, -16
    .cfi_def_cfa_register 6
    movl    %edi, -4(%rbp)
    movl    %esi, %eax
    movb    %al, -8(%rbp)
    leave
    ret
    .cfi_endproc
.LFE1:
    .size   func, .-func
    .ident  "GCC: (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu9) 4.4.1"
    .section    .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits

I didn't get the purpose of these.

Answer 1

To disable these, use the gcc option

-fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables

---

-fno-dwarf2-cfi-asm may be needed also.