Re: Library interface to GDB

[Greg Watson <g.watson@computer.org>]

Dave, Martin,

I too have been doing some work in this area that may be of interest. I've
developed a client/server debugger API using a combination of SunRPC and
Berkeley sockets that I guess falls somewhere between the CORBA/libgdb ideas
you've been discussing. My API is designed to interface directly with a UI/GUI
and is independent of the back-end debugger. Of course, I've also had to resort
to building a gdb command/response parser like the libdryad one. I've long
thought that it would be great to have a library interface to gdb commands, but
run into the same problems with libgdb as you've done. The architecure you
suggest below would fit extremely well into my project, so I'd be happy to be
involved in this as well.

Regards,

Greg Watson
Research Fellow
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Martin Baulig wrote:

> Dave Camp <campd@oit.edu> writes:
>
> > And Martin - perhaps we can discuss working together on a debugger -
> > taking some stuff from ggdb (for example, I like parts of the idl) and
> > putting in Dryad, or whatever.  No sense in us working on redundant
> > projects.  Email me and we'll discuss it.
>
> Yes, sure. And my GDB library idea is not really a "redundant project",
> it should be a very low-level interface to gdb which basically means to
> put gdb into a library, export all important functions and add some
> wrappers to things where gdb outputs text for instance.
>
> If I understood your implementation correctly, your CORBA interface will
> talk to libdryad which handles the interaction with the debugger but is
> independent from any special debugger. This is a very good idea since it
> gives people the chance to use dryad with a different debugger than gdb
> as well.
>
> I just want to insert an additional "layer of abstraction" - a low-level
> interface to gdb which libdry will use so we'll have something like
>
>     application (ie. dryad) ->                          ->  libgdb (for gdb)
>
>                                dryad CORBA -> libdryad
>
>     other application       ->                          ->  libfoo (for bar)
>
> Of cause we can discuss this, we really should work together on this project.
>
> --
> Martin Baulig - martin@home-of-linux.org - http://www.home-of-linux.org