Current and future GDB for ARM plans

Registered by Michael Hope

Discusses the current state of GDB on ARM, what we're doing in the short term, and future areas to investiagte.

Note: may be a short session as the drafter is unavailable

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
Ulrich Weigand
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

1. GDB correctness

The main goals of this item are:
- GDB should pass its testsuite on ARM with no regressions compared to Intel
- Tested configurations: -marm / -mthumb, GCC 4.4 / 4.5 / 4.6, system debug info present / missing
- Stretch goal: no testsuite failures at all (either Intel or ARM)

Specific issues that are already identified and require fixing:
- Neon register support in core files (kernel support)
- Interrupted syscall handling (kernel support)
- signal handler stepping (kernel support)
- debug info for args in varargs routine (GCC support)
- C++ debug info fixes (GCC support)
- fix backtraces (support ARM unwind records, prologue parsing on Thumb-2)
- fix software watchpoints (improved epilogue detection)

2. GDB feature parity

The main goal of this item is to enable on ARM all GDB features that are available on other platforms, to the extent this is considered feasible and useful.

Specific features that fall into this category are:
- hardware breakpoint/watchpoint support (kernel support)
- non-stop mode / displaced stepping support on Thumb
- syscall tracing support
- record/replay support
- tracepoint support (gdbserver)

(?)

Work Items