gdb/735: Getting the i386 watchpoints into the target vector?

[ac131313 at redhat dot com]

>Number:         735
>Category:       gdb
>Synopsis:       Getting the i386 watchpoints into the target vector?
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    unassigned
>State:          open
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Sep 27 10:48:01 PDT 2002
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     ac131313@redhat.com
>Release:        unknown-1.0
>Organization:
>Environment:

>Description:
See thread:
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb/2002-09/msg00300.html
Hello,

With the watchpoint interface made part of the target vector, its time to think about how the i386 case should be handled.  Instead of using a system interface, the i386 manipulates the hardware watchpoint registers directly.  For want of a better name, I'll call this ``native watchpoints''.

One thought is to change the config/i386/nm-i386.h macros to something native specific (native_insert_watchpoint()) and then have the various native targets (infptrace.c, ...) add these methods to their target vector.

It does restrict things to native targets.  A remote target couldn't make use of GDB's built-in knowledge of watchpoint registers.

Another (less well thought out) idea, is for the target stack, to fall back to the ``native watchpoint'' mechanism when the [remote] target doesn't support watchpoints. I think this would mean putting the ``native watchpoint'' methods in the architecture vector where the target vector code could call it.

Thoughts?  Better ideas?

Andrew

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