Re: GDB ARIndex cleanup

Joel Brobecker
2009-03-26T23:10:17Z

> 1) "inline"
> for inline, someone once said that the rule that we should not use
> "inline" keyword is old, and maybe not correct anymore.
>
> If everyone agrees that this rule should stay, I will be happy to
> commit an obvious fix removing all of them as this seems quite
> mechanical, but I wanted to get some feedback first.

I don't know much about the effectiveness of using "inline".
I personally tend to avoid it, because I trust the compiler to determine
whether an inline will help or not. So I'm OK either way.

> This is more difficult for me to fix, as
> the difference between "Linux kernel" and "GNU/Linux system"
> is still kind of fuzzy...

As a first guess, I think a lot of the references will be to the Linux
kernel. GDB interfaces mostly with the kernel. GNU/Linux would refer
to the larger systems that runs on the Linux kernel.

However, I'm wondering if this rule is really all that helpful
for the GDB project or not. I suspect this comes from a request
from RMS to make sure that this distinction be made in GNU code.
But it might seem a bit awkward when you read it.

> /* Linux target descriptions. */

I'm actually not 100% sure about this one. I think that target descriptions
can be used to describe other things than register availability and
numbering. So, generally speaking, the above might be ambiguous. But
in practice, the target_desc below are describing registers, so
Linux Kernel. Again, not 100% sure.

> /* The list of issues to contend with here is taken from
> resume_execution in arch/x86/kernel/kprobes.c, Linux 2.6.28.
> Yay for Free Software! */

Kernel.

> When waiting for an event in all threads, waitpid is not quite good. Prior
> to
> version 2.4, Linux can either wait for event in main thread, or in secondary

Kernel.

> /* The length of the longest i386 instruction (according to
> include/asm-i386/kprobes.h in Linux 2.6. */

Kernel (he's talking about the kernel sources)

> /* Wrappers to handle Linux-only registers. */

Kernel.

> /* Initialize the Linux target descriptions. */

Kernel. Again, sounds pretty awkward to use "Linux Kernel target
descriptions".

--
Joel