From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: James Ingham To: Fernando Nasser Cc: Steven Johnson , Insight Mailing List Subject: Re: Disassembly Window Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 09:25:00 -0000 Message-id: <14571.27013.103290.130590@leda.cygnus.com> References: <38EA5ED1.827206D7@ozemail.com.au> <38EB5137.890574D3@redhat.com> X-SW-Source: 2000-q2/msg00019.html Fernando, and Steven, I am of two minds about this. I agree that being able to inspect memory on the board before the program has been loaded is a good idea. But I wonder if the source window is the correct place to do this. You really want to be able to point at any region of memory disassembly that. However, you may not have references to that code anywhere in your sources. So it seems like overloading the source windows methods for finding what it is going to display is not the best way to do it. Also, the memory display in the Source window is routine based or file based, for disassembly, it wants to do a whole function. So in cases where you don't know when a function begins & ends, its display paradigm doesn't really work. Better would be to have two modes for the Memory window, one that displays raw memory, and one that displays the given region of memory as disassembly. This is a more natural interface, since you just go to the memory window and type in the address where your ROM code, or whatever, resides, and you can see it. You can also easily control how much gets displayed by how far you open the window. Actually, there are really three useful states for the Memory window, raw memory, view as disassembly, and view as an array of some given type. These other two modes have been on my TODO list for a while now, but I haven't had time to get around to them. This is a bit more work (though just to hack in the disassembly display here is not that bad. But I think it is a better solution in the long term. What do you think? And I echo Fernando, if you want to try your hand at this Steven, I will help you get started. Insight is not that hard to work on, but it is much less well documented than it should be, mostly just comments in the code, sadly enough. Another item on the TODO list... Jim > I have exactly the same problem. I am connecting to a hardware emulator > and the code is already there (I may not even have the source code at > all). > > But it should be an option (as opposed to always on). > > Jim, It would be nice if we could add it, don't you think? > > Fernando > > P.S.: Steven, are you volunteering? ;-) > > > > Steven Johnson wrote: > > > > Regarding the Code Display Window, > > > > Is Insight supposed to show disassembly of the current PC in the main > > code window before any code is loaded? Is there a way to enable this? > > This may not make sense to some people, but for an embedded target like > > mine, just because I havent explicitly loaded a program does not mean > > the disassembly is not interesting, in fact its exactly the opposite. > > > > Regards, > > Steven Johnson > > -- > Fernando Nasser > Red Hat, Inc. - Toronto E-Mail: fnasser@redhat.com > 2323 Yonge Street, Suite #300 Tel: 416-482-2661 ext. 311 > Toronto, Ontario M4P 2C9 Fax: 416-482-6299 > -- ++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++==++ Jim Ingham jingham@cygnus.com Cygnus Solutions, a Red Hat Company