OS X cross-debugging from Linux?

["Michael D. Crawford" <crawford at goingware dot com>]

Greetings, I have just joined the list.

I want to develop a Mac OS X device driver.  One can debug the OS X kernel using 
GDB as a cross-debugger between two machines over ethernet.  Apple has a page 
that describes how to do it here:

http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/documentation/howto/html/KEXT_Tutorials/HelloDebugger.html

However, this assumes both machines are running OS X and using the version of 
GDB that Apple provides.

I'm going to be away visiting relatives for about a month and it wouldn't be 
convenient for me to take my desktop Mac.  I have an x86 laptop that runs Linux. 
  Could I have GDB run on my linux laptop and debug OS X running on an iBook?

I asked about this on the darwin-drivers mailing list and someone thought that 
it would be possible, but I would need to make a special build of GDB because 
the main GDB distribution hasn't picked up all of Apple's customizations. 
Apparently there is a special protocol as well as support for the mach-o binary 
format that needs to be enabled.

I assume I can get the source to Apple's GDB from its website, but maybe there 
are issues with getting it to work on Linux.  For example, it may care about the 
byte order (Macs run big-endian PowerPC processors) or about the API used to 
talk over the network (OS X has Berkeley sockets but I don't know if there's 
anything weird about them).

Any help is appreciated.

My x86 laptop runs Slackware 8.

If I can get this to work I will write up a HOWTO and post it on the web.

Thanks,

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
crawford@goingware.com

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