From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 1793 invoked by alias); 15 Nov 2005 02:59:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 1785 invoked by uid 22791); 15 Nov 2005 02:58:58 -0000 Received: from zproxy.gmail.com (HELO zproxy.gmail.com) (64.233.162.203) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.30-dev) with ESMTP; Tue, 15 Nov 2005 02:58:58 +0000 Received: by zproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id l1so1572794nzf for ; Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:58:56 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.36.215.21 with SMTP id n21mr2581169nzg; Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:58:56 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.37.2.35 with HTTP; Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:58:56 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <8f2776cb0511141858x1e140278vdfe58bc3efee2a6@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 02:59:00 -0000 From: Jim Blandy To: gdb@sources.redhat.com Subject: "A word-aligned memory transfer mechanism is needed" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2005-11/txt/msg00282.txt.bz2 The description of the 'm' packet in (gdb)Remote Serial Protocol says: Neither gdb nor the stub assume that sized memory transfers are assumed using word aligned accesses. FIXME: A word aligned memory transfer mechanism is needed. This mysterious admonition is repeated in the description of the reply. The text seems to date back to the original check-in of the docs. At first I assumed that this was trying to say that ADDR isn't necessarily word-aligned. I think that's worth stating clearly. But then I realized that it might be trying to say that a read or write of a word-sized value to a word-aligned memory location may not be carried out by the stub using a word-sized access; it is free to use the appropriate number of byte accesses. In other words, this packet doesn't provide the kind of control needed to access some memory-mapped I/O devices. Do folks agree that this is what that meant to say? If we're not sure what it means, we should take it out.