Cell SDK GDB versus GNU GDB

Cell SDK GDB versus GNU GDB

[George Russell]

Hi all,

I am curious to know if the GNU gdb current versions have incorporated 
the work on GDB done as a part of the Cell SDK. I would like to use 
features of the MI interface of GDB present in GNU gdb, but absent in 
the Cell SDK version.

Does anyone know the status of a merge, if any?

Cheers,
George Russell

Re: Cell SDK GDB versus GNU GDB

[Ulrich Weigand]

George Russell wrote:

> I am curious to know if the GNU gdb current versions have incorporated 
> the work on GDB done as a part of the Cell SDK. I would like to use 
> features of the MI interface of GDB present in GNU gdb, but absent in 
> the Cell SDK version.
> 
> Does anyone know the status of a merge, if any?

The bulk of the Cell SDK GDB features, in particular multi-architecture
debugging support, have now been merged into mainline GDB.

To the best of my knowledge, there are only two features that have not
been merged:

- Improved handling of multiple definitions of symbols of the same name:
  http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2008-05/msg00190.html

- SPU-specific GDB/MI extensions (-spu-info-...):
  http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2007-06/msg00020.html

[ In both cases, there was some concern in the community on whether the
feature and/or the implementation is the right way to go, and then we
didn't really follow up to bring the issues to a resolution. ]

If you do not specifically depend on either of those features, current
GDB mainline should work fine on Cell.  If you have any problems getting
it to work, please let me know ...

Bye,
Ulrich

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

Re: Cell SDK GDB versus GNU GDB

[George Russell]

Ulrich Weigand wrote:
> If you do not specifically depend on either of those features, current
> GDB mainline should work fine on Cell.  If you have any problems getting
> it to work, please let me know ...
>
>   
Hi,

Thanks for that helpful information!

I have one more question. By current GDB mainline, do you mean the gdb 
from CVS, or a released stable version e.g. 6.8 from March, 2008?

Thanks,
George Russell

Re: Cell SDK GDB versus GNU GDB

[Ulrich Weigand]

George Russell wrote:

> I have one more question. By current GDB mainline, do you mean the gdb 
> from CVS, or a released stable version e.g. 6.8 from March, 2008?

GDB from CVS.  In fact, Cell multi-architecture debugging support was
only recently added (2009-07-31).  Support will be present in the next
stable release (GDB 7.0), which should be out later this year.

Bye,
Ulrich

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