Re: gdb supported on powerpc-apple-darwin ?

[Stan Shebs <stanshebs@earthlink.net>]

Mario Emmenlauer wrote:
> I would assume that basic Darwin support in FSF GDB would be a good
> starting point. You mentioned you already put some work into it, any
> chances that you will continue? How far have you gotten?
I got it to where it would up seize up waiting for signals and such from 
the inferior. :-) Just that much involved bringing over several thousand 
lines of Darwin-specific code. Dunno when/if I'll get back to it, 
CodeSourcery is keeping me plenty busy. :-)
>
> It seems very sadening that FSF gdb won't ever incorporate Apples
> changes (or another type of darwin support). Of course one might know
> who to point the finger at, but in the end that won't help.
> If Apples fork is GPL, would it not be possible to back-merge the
> darwin support, leaving out the other changes that are incompatible
> to the current interface(s)?
That's exactly what I did. The problem is that basic Darwin support is 
more complicated than average for a native config, because one has to 
listen for both messages and signals delivered by the system, and some 
of those calls are blocking - so GDB itself has to be multithreaded just 
so it can simultaneously listen for everything.

A concerted effort by one person (either inside or outside Apple) could 
probably get the two versions back in sync, but it's a heavy-duty 
hacking project that will likely take a number of months of fulltime effort.

Stan