Re: Question on 'set tdesc filename <path>'.

["Anmol P. Paralkar" <b07584@freescale.com>]

On Fri, 9 May 2008, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:

> On Fri, May 09, 2008 at 11:50:27AM -0500, Anmol P. Paralkar wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>>  Is there actually a scenario when the user would ask that the target description be
>>  read from /<path> (locally, host-side) rather then relying on the default behaviour
>>  to have GDB read the description from the target?
>
> Yes: if a deployed target does not support supplying the description
> automatically.  One possible reason might be space constraints on the
> target system.  Another might be that the target stub is simply old.
>
> It's also useful for testing.

  Oh, OK. So in these cases, the register ordering in the description had better match-up
  what the remote-stub (implements and) sends - I mean, since in the case where the remote
  side sends the description, this is automatically ensured as GDB parses in the XML.
  I follow why the command is needed, thanks.

>
>>  the default behaviour. (So my understanding is that the XML descriptions provided
>>  in the GDB sources are purely as reference for bare-metal application writers to use
>>  in their remote-stub implementations).
>
> They are provided as reference, but also built-in to both GDB and
> gdbserver for internal use.

  So, in the case of PowerPC, the [pu]trace interface would only provide the standard 71
  registers; what if we want to contribute back a description that defines more than those?
  Is it OK for a description to have more than what the [pu]trace interface provides, since
  you say that this gets built-in to GDB & gdbserver?

Thanks,
Anmol.

>
> -- 
> Daniel Jacobowitz
> CodeSourcery
>