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From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@mvista.com>
To: gdb@sources.redhat.com
Subject: RFC: Unpredictable register set operations
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 22:09:00 -0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20030715220923.GA30513@nevyn.them.org> (raw)

I'm sure this has come up before, but I couldn't find a discussion anywhere
so I'll just have to ask again...

Consider PowerPC and the $ps register (MSR).  When debugging a kernel or
embedded application, GDB has pretty complete control (?) over this
register.  In GNU/Linux userspace, however, only two bits of it can be set. 
The rest are read-only.

So what happens if you "set $ps = 0"?  Well, the right thing happens, but
until the next time the target stops "print $ps" will print 0.  Which is not
actually the value of the $ps register.

Here's the options that I see:
  - Ignore and document this.
  - Refetch registers after storing them.
  - Invalidate registers for lazy re-fetch after storing them.
  - Add a target hook for might-be-volatile registers, and invalidate
    only those registers after storing them - or don't cache them at
    all.

Thoughts?  Is this a problem worth fixing?

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer

             reply	other threads:[~2003-07-15 22:09 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2003-07-15 22:09 Daniel Jacobowitz [this message]
2003-07-15 22:27 ` Kevin Buettner
2003-07-15 22:29 ` Doug Evans
2003-07-16  2:46 ` Andrew Cagney
2003-07-16  3:21   ` Daniel Jacobowitz
2003-07-21 16:48     ` Daniel Jacobowitz
2003-08-05  5:13       ` Andrew Cagney

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