Re: Building today's snapshot of GDB with MinGW

[Pedro Alves <pedro@palves.net>]

On 7/2/20 6:46 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Cc: tromey@adacore.com, brobecker@adacore.com, gdb-patches@sourceware.org
>> From: Pedro Alves <pedro@palves.net>
>> Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2020 15:40:20 +0100
>>
>>> 290 i[34567]86-*-linux*)
>>> 291         # Target: Intel 386 running GNU/Linux
>>> 292         gdb_target_obs="i386-linux-tdep.o \
>>> 293                         glibc-tdep.o \
>>> 294                         solib-svr4.o symfile-mem.o \
>>> 295                         linux-tdep.o linux-record.o"
>>> 296         if test "x$enable_64_bit_bfd" = "xyes"; then
>>> 297             # Target: GNU/Linux x86-64
>>> 298             gdb_target_obs="amd64-linux-tdep.o ${gdb_target_obs}"
>>> 299         fi
>>> 300         ;;
>>>
>>
>> This is so a i686-linux-gnu hosted toolchain works with 64-bit binaries.
>> There are vendors who prefer (or used to prefer, time has passed
>> and don't know if that's still a thing) it that way, as it's a single
>> build for 32-bit and 64-bit hosts that way.   Users can then build
>> 64-bit apps with e.g., "i686-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc -m64".  Naturally,
>> the debugger follows suit (though that's only useful for cross debugging,
>> since for native debugging 64-bit inferiors, you need a 64-bit debugger).
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> AFAIK, this is impossible on Windows: a 64-bit debugger can debug
> 32-bit programs (and I think GDB recently learned how to do that), but
> a 32-bit debugger cannot debug 64-bit programs.
> 

Which is exactly the same with Linux.  See my parenthetical remark above.

I.e., a 32-bit GNU/Linux gdb cannot debug a native 64-bit program, but
it can debug against a 64-bit GNU/Linux gdbserver.

So if you make a similar change for Windows, you'll make it so that
a 32-bit Windows gdb could debug against a 64-bit Windows gdbserver.
Whether that's really useful, I have no clue.  All depends on how you
intend to ship the binaries.  Maybe vendors have all switched to
64-bit-hosted toolchains nowadays.