From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Mark Kettenis <kettenis@wins.uva.nl>
To: eliz@delorie.com
Cc: gdb@sources.redhat.com
Subject: Re: gdb doesn't work very well with dynamic linked binaries
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2000 08:30:00 -0000
Message-id: <200009081529.e88FTjx15960@debye.wins.uva.nl>
References: <200009070855.EAA00749@albacore> <200009071500.LAA07756@indy.delorie.com>
X-SW-Source: 2000-09/msg00086.html

   Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 11:00:32 -0400 (EDT)
   From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@delorie.com>
   CC: jcownie@etnus.com, gdb@sources.redhat.com
   Content-Type: text
   Content-Length: 1217

   >   Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 12:09:50 +0200 (MET DST)
   >   From: Mark Kettenis <kettenis@wins.uva.nl>
   >
   >   Yep.  This means that getting HW watchpoints working for
   >   multi-threaded processes is a bit difficult, since GDB expects them to
   >   be process-wide.  So any HW watchpoints will have to be inserted in
   >   *all* threads, not just one as we do now.
   >
   >   Eli, this probably means that adding the debugging registers to GDB's
   >   register cache isn't a good idea.  Something more specialized is
   >   needed, i.e. a native-dependent interface that updates the address and
   >   control register in all threads.  This might implicate that keeping
   >   the actual HW watchpoint support a native-only thing is a good idea.

   Why ``native-dependent'' and not ``target-dependent''?  Won't the same
   problem affect any multithreaded ia32 target?  Or am I missing
   something?

Well, we already have a special packet in the remote protocol for
setting watchpoints, so in principle it isn't necessary to be
``target-dependant''.

The problems are likely to be different for the other multi-threaded
systems.  Linux is kinda weird in that respect.

   In any case, would a special array of debug registers be an okay
   solution?  The elements of that array will be set by
   ia32_insert_watchpoint and ia32_remove_watchpoint (to be written), and
   target-dependent subroutines which resume the inferior and get control
   when the inferior is stopped will access that array to pass the
   registers to the debuggee.

I think it is important to realize that the address and control
registers should be per-process, whereas the status register should be
per-thread.  On Linux, the code to actually pass the registers to the
debuggee should probably live in the (currently native-only)
threads-module.

Oh, and please use an i386_ prefix for the function names instead of
ia32_ for consistency :-).

Mark