Re: [PATCH 00/25 V2] Make GDB builtin target descriptions more flexible

[Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca>]

On 2017-06-12 10:41, Yao Qi wrote:
> This patch series is to change GDB and GDBserver builtin target
> descriptions more flexible, by removing pre-generated ones.  Instead,
> these builtin target descriptions can be got lazily and dynamically.
> GDB builtin target descriptions are created from initialize_tdesc_*
> functions in features/*.c files, while GDBserver builtin target
> descriptions are generated from regformats/*.dat files.
> 
> This patch series changes both GDB and GDBserver to create target
> description dynamically from features, instead of using pre-generated
> target descriptions.  This patch series only convert x86-linux (
> including i386-linux, amd64-linux and x32-linux) target description
> to demonstrate the usefulness of the change.
> 
> Once one target architecture switches to the new flexible target
> description,
> 
>  - only need xml feature files under gdb/features directory.  All
>  existing target description xml files can be kept for the tests.
>  Add new xml feature file if we want to support the new feature,
>  but don't need to add new target description xml files.
> 
>  - All existing gdb/regformats/*.dat are not used, but kept for
>  the tests.
> 
> This is the V2, and V1 is here
> https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2017-05/msg00291.html,
> the differences are,
> 
>  - Change target descriptions for both GDB and GDBserver,
>  - Generate functions creating features from xml feature file
>    instead of feature name, so that don't have to worry about
>    different features with the same name (different features
>    with the same name still have different file names).
>  - Extend the changes for i386-linux to x86-linux (including,
>    {i386,amd64,x32}-linux)
> 
> The big design change in V2 is that use generate c files from
> xml feature files, and use generate c files in both GDB and
> GDBserver.
> 
> In next step,  I want to remove the duplication of target
> descriptions in GDB and GDBserver, and share more code on
> creating x86-linux target descriptions in GDB and GDBserver.
> I also want people give comments on how to do unit/self
> tests in GDBserver, see patch 14.  The purpose of this patch
> series is still to demonstrate the design, so the changelog,
> NEWS entry, and doc may be incomplete.  I'll complete them
> later.
> 
> Regression tested on x86_64-linux (both -m64 and -m32),
> native and gdbserver, on aarch64-linux native and gdbserver.
> ppc64-linux, native.

Hi Yao,

Do you have a git branch we can pull from to look at this change?

Thanks,

Simon