Re: [Patch] Mechanism for board files to set default remotetimeout

[Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com>]

On 05/31/2013 09:57 PM, Sterling Augustine wrote:
> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 3:13 AM, Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com> wrote:
>> On 05/31/2013 12:42 AM, Sterling Augustine wrote:
>>> The enclosed simple patch adds and demonstrates a new mechanism for a
>>> board file to declare a default remotetimeout.
>>
>> Took me a bit to realize this is about "set remotetimeout" in gdb,
>> not the expect timeout.  It wasn't that obvious from the
>> description.  :-)
>>
>> Is this really necessary?  The board could just append "-l TIMEOUT"
>> to the GDB command line invocation.  Looks simpler, and doesn't
>> depend on issuing an interactive GDB command.
> 
> I'll switch to this.
> 
>>> It follows a similar mechanism as set height 0.
>>>
>>> This is useful if the board has high latency for internal gdb
>>> commands, as remote-stdio-gdbserver.exp does.
>>
>> "high latency for internal gdb commands"?
>>
>> What does that mean?  What are internal gdb commands?
> 
> I meant to distinguish between the communication that happens between
> the user and gdb, and the communication that happens between gdb and
> gdbserver. Not very well, apparently.

:-)  Calling those the remote serial protocol (RSP) commands would be
clearer.

> 
>>
>> Testsuite knobs boards can tweak should be documented somewhere.
>> Looks like under "Testsuite Configuration" in the gdbint manual
>> might be a good place?  Would be great if it was minimally
>> documented in the .exp itself too.
> 
> Since I'm switching to the other mechanism, I guess I won't worry
> about this. I will however, separately submit a patch to the "set
> remotetimeout" command's documentation, mentioning that there is a
> command line option which does the same thing. Would have saved me a
> bit of trouble.

That's always nice, thanks.

Note however, given "-ex", you don't even need the special -l switch.

This

  gdb -ex "set remotetimeout xxx"

works just as fine.  So you can do this from the command line:

$ make check RUNTESTFLAGS="GDBFLAGS='-ex set\ remotetimeout\ 1000'"

Or, for example, this is a board file I have for testing
GDB in different modes:

~~~
set board_info(localhost,isremote) 0
load_generic_config "unix"

set GDBFLAGS ""
#set GDBFLAGS "${GDBFLAGS} -ex \"set target-async on\""
#set GDBFLAGS "${GDBFLAGS} -ex \"set break always-inserted on\""
#set GDBFLAGS "${GDBFLAGS} -ex \"set displaced-stepping on\""

# The default compiler for this target.
set_board_info compiler "[find_gcc]"
~~~

I then go and uncomment one of those lines to pick the mode I want.

and run with:

$ make check RUNTESTFLAGS="--target_board=localhost"

(I call that board file localhost.exp)

-- 
Pedro Alves