Hi,

I found out that GDB is not currently disassembling instructions which
are available on power4, power5 or power6 processors even though it has
support to do so. GDB copies the disassembler code from binutils, which
provides a -M option to let the user specify the dialect to be used, but
the problem is that GDB itself doesn't provide a command or option to
let
the user specify the dialect. The result is that the powerpc_dialect()
function in ppc-dis.c will always return the same value, which doesn't
include any of the PPC_OPCODE_POWER[456] flags.

Example:

(gdb) disassemble main
Dump of assembler code for function main:
0x1000046c <main+0>:    stwu    r1,-48(r1)
0x10000470 <main+4>:    stw     r31,44(r1)
0x10000474 <main+8>:    mr      r31,r1
0x10000478 <main+12>:   stw     r3,24(r31)
0x1000047c <main+16>:   stw     r4,28(r31)
0x10000480 <main+20>:   li      r0,4
0x10000484 <main+24>:   stw     r0,8(r31)
0x10000488 <main+28>:   .long 0x7c284fec
0x1000048c <main+32>:   .long 0xed405834
0x10000490 <main+36>:   lwz     r11,0(r1)
0x10000494 <main+40>:   lwz     r31,-4(r11)
0x10000498 <main+44>:   mr      r1,r11
0x1000049c <main+48>:   blr
End of assembler dump.
(gdb)

In the output above, ".long 0x7c284fec" is an instruction available
only in power4 or later processors (dcbzl), and ".long 0xed405834"
is available only in power5 or later (frsqrtes).

The attached patch makes GDB always use the -Many option of the
disassembler, which will make it disassemble every instruction it
understands.

Here's the output with the patch applied:

(gdb) disassemble main
Dump of assembler code for function main:
0x1000046c <main+0>:    stwu    r1,-48(r1)
0x10000470 <main+4>:    stw     r31,44(r1)
0x10000474 <main+8>:    mr      r31,r1
0x10000478 <main+12>:   stw     r3,24(r31)
0x1000047c <main+16>:   stw     r4,28(r31)
0x10000480 <main+20>:   li      r0,4
0x10000484 <main+24>:   stw     r0,8(r31)
0x10000488 <main+28>:   dcbzl   r8,r9
0x1000048c <main+32>:   frsqrtes f10,f11
0x10000490 <main+36>:   lwz     r11,0(r1)
0x10000494 <main+40>:   lwz     r31,-4(r11)
0x10000498 <main+44>:   mr      r1,r11
0x1000049c <main+48>:   blr
End of assembler dump.
(gdb)

Comments? Can this patch be applied?
-- 
[]'s
Thiago Jung Bauermann
Software Engineer
IBM Linux Technology Center