Re: GDB for multiple targets

["Ulrich Weigand" <uweigand@de.ibm.com>]

Marc Khouzam wrote:

> What we are hoping for is to use the same GDB binary on a host
> to debug many different targets such as:
> x86 Linux and non-linux
> powerPC linux and non-linux
> powerPC Linux and x86 non-linux
> ...
> Emulator e.g. QEMU, Simics,

Yes, it was certainly the intent that the --enable-targets options
should make such a use case possible.

> From what has been said, I believe this is possible, as long as
> the user specifies the osabi using the 'set oasbi' command.
> If the osabi was automatically set by GDB, as you suggest above,
> is there anything else to worry about to allow the
> same GDB binary to be able to automatically be ready to debug the
> many different targets above?

Except for the target architecture (which is already provided as
part of the target description) and the osabi, the only remaining
feature that falls back to a compile-time default is the target
byte order (as far as I can see).  Now, the byte order fallback
is only used if the endianness cannot be determined from the
executable file being debugged, so this should be a rare case.
However, it would certainly make sense to allow the target to
provide byte order information in the target description as well.

Bye,
Ulrich

-- 
  Dr. Ulrich Weigand
  GNU Toolchain for Linux on System z and Cell BE
  Ulrich.Weigand@de.ibm.com