Re: Patching gdb 5.0 for XFree86 module support

["Mike A. Harris" <mharris at redhat dot com>]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2001, Andrew Cagney wrote:

>> I've been working the last few days on porting an older gdb 
>> 4.18 patch that adds support to gdb for debugging XFree86 
>> loadable modules in place without requiring a static server 
>> build.  This has several advantages for an XFree86 developer, as 
>> well as for the more technical user out there who is capable of 
>> debugging a problem, but not necessarily willing or capable to 
>> rebuild XFree86 from source as a static server.
>
>Just FYI, shared library support in current GDB is very different to 
>that found in 5.0.  It was overhalled and made far far more modular.

Cool.  So it sounds like doing this might be simpler than I
initially anticipated?

Should I grab a copy of the gdb head CVS, or a particular tag?  
Also, can you point me to the CVS info for gdb?

>Looking at this patch and especially the comment:
>
>>> +/* The XFree server has its own dynamic load mechanism. Unlike shared
>>> + * libraries it loads regular .o (or even .a) files. GDB support for
>>> + * tracking loaded modules is very similar to shared libraries however
>>> + * (in fact much of this code originated in solib.c).
>>> + *
>>> + * There are a few differences. We don't need to do very much in the
>>> + * create_inferior hook as no modules are loaded at that point so we
>>> + * just tidy up after the last run, tell the inferior that we're
>>> + * around and insert a breakpoint so we get chance to do something
>>> + * when a module is loaded.
>>> + *
>>> + */
>
>the basic idea is sound.  Per Daniel J's comment several people have 
>proposed similar things while makig the observation that the current 
>shlib implementation should be generalized.

Makes sense.  How complex a task to you think that would be?

>PS: Since the patch is very old, I'll just add a heads up that I'll need 
>to run the usual checks.

Cool, thanks.



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Mike A. Harris                  Shipping/mailing address:
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