Trouble with gdb 6.8 on Irix

Trouble with gdb 6.8 on Irix

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

Hello, I am getting the following error while building gdb 6.8 on Irix.
It was easy to surpass by compiling without -Werror, but I'm reporting
it to get it fixed in the next version.

gmake[2]: Entering directory `/tmp/gdb-6.8/gdb'
gcc -c -g -O2   -I. -I.././gdb -I.././gdb/config
-DLOCALEDIR="\"/usr/share/locale\"" -DHAVE_CONFIG_H
-I.././gdb/../include/opcode -I.././gdb/../readline/.. -I../bfd
-I.././gdb/../bfd -I.././gdb/../include -I../libdecnumber
-I.././gdb/../libdecnumber   -DMI_OUT=1 -DTUI=1  -Wall
-Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wpointer-arith -Wformat-nonliteral
-Wno-unused -Wno-switch -Wno-char-subscripts -Werror remote.c
remote.c: In function `extended_remote_attach_1':
remote.c:2859: warning: unsigned int format, pid_t arg (arg 3)
gmake[2]: *** [remote.o] Error 1
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/gdb-6.8/gdb'

But on my system the following is true for pid_t:
          typedef  long            pid_t;


I should also note that gdb 6.8 doesn't work as it should on my
platform. I am trying to debug firefox, but gdb just hangs while loading
the binary. Top shows 100% CPU usage for firefox, 0% for gdb, and it
stays like that for long. I had better results with gdb 6.3, where gdb
managed to work but was unable to provide a proper backtrace when the
crash happened. 


Another error I'm getting, this time when loading a core file, is the
following:
This GDB was configured as "mips-sgi-irix6.5"...
BFD: /tmp/firefox-3.0rc1/obj-mips-sgi-irix6.5/dist/bin/components/libgklayout.so: don't know how to handle processor specific section `.events.stubs' [0x70000021]
BFD: /tmp/firefox-3.0rc1/obj-mips-sgi-irix6.5/dist/bin/components/libgklayout.so: don't know how to handle processor specific section `.events.stubs' [0x70000021]
Error while mapping shared library sections:
"/tmp/firefox-3.0rc1/obj-mips-sgi-irix6.5/dist/bin/components/libgklayout.so": not in executable format: File format not recognized.


Finally a minor issue is that gdb needs gmake to compile. It's not a
bug, but I thought that since autotools are being used, the Makefiles
would be portable to all makes. However the native make of Irix aborts
with a syntax error. Please tell me if you care on this, so that I'll
send you more details. 


Thanks, 
Dimitris

Re: Trouble with gdb 6.8 on Irix

[Joel Brobecker]

Dimitris,

> I should also note that gdb 6.8 doesn't work as it should on my
> platform. I am trying to debug firefox, but gdb just hangs while loading
> the binary. Top shows 100% CPU usage for firefox, 0% for gdb, and it
> stays like that for long. I had better results with gdb 6.3, where gdb
> managed to work but was unable to provide a proper backtrace when the
> crash happened. 

I think that GDB on mips-irix has been in dire need of attention.
It's something I have on my list and I hope to get to it by the end
of the year, but my hopes often get overridden by more urgent issues...
The release that AdaCore uses in its product is GDB 5.3 (very old now,
I know).

> remote.c: In function `extended_remote_attach_1':
> remote.c:2859: warning: unsigned int format, pid_t arg (arg 3)
> gmake[2]: *** [remote.o] Error 1
> gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/gdb-6.8/gdb'
> 
> But on my system the following is true for pid_t:
>           typedef  long            pid_t;

I didn't see this problem when I tried to build on this platform.
But I was using the CVS HEAD, so either this is already fixed there,
or we're using different compiler versions (mine is based on 4.1).

> Finally a minor issue is that gdb needs gmake to compile. It's not a
> bug, but I thought that since autotools are being used, the Makefiles
> would be portable to all makes. However the native make of Irix aborts
> with a syntax error. Please tell me if you care on this, so that I'll
> send you more details. 

Please send in the details. There was some talk about adding GNU make
as a requirement to build GDB, but this may not happen.

-- 
Joel

Re: Trouble with gdb 6.8 on Irix

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2008, Joel Brobecker wrote:

> I think that GDB on mips-irix has been in dire need of attention.
> It's something I have on my list and I hope to get to it by the end
> of the year, but my hopes often get overridden by more urgent issues...
> The release that AdaCore uses in its product is GDB 5.3 (very old now,
> I know).

If you care about GDB on mips-irix, I strongly advise caring about GCC as 
well, or finding someone to care about it.  Right now, it is on the list 
of targets to be deprecated in GCC 4.4 because we wish to remove fixproto 
and it is one of the few targets still using fixproto (so someone would 
need to stop it from using fixproto, and make fixincludes do any necessary 
fixes fixproto does at present for this target).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com

Re: Trouble with gdb 6.8 on Irix

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 09:51 -0700, Joel Brobecker wrote:
> Dimitris,
> 
> > I should also note that gdb 6.8 doesn't work as it should on my
> > platform. I am trying to debug firefox, but gdb just hangs while loading
> > the binary. Top shows 100% CPU usage for firefox, 0% for gdb, and it
> > stays like that for long. I had better results with gdb 6.3, where gdb
> > managed to work but was unable to provide a proper backtrace when the
> > crash happened. 
> 
> I think that GDB on mips-irix has been in dire need of attention.
> It's something I have on my list and I hope to get to it by the end
> of the year, but my hopes often get overridden by more urgent issues...
> The release that AdaCore uses in its product is GDB 5.3 (very old now,
> I know).

It's a pity. Please don't deprecate gcc or gdb on Irix. SGI are very
closed-architecture machines and Irix is the only OS that takes
advantage of their full potential. I would be glad to help in any way,
even if I didn't understand a thing of the fixproto stuff you were
talking about.

> 
> > remote.c: In function `extended_remote_attach_1':
> > remote.c:2859: warning: unsigned int format, pid_t arg (arg 3)
> > gmake[2]: *** [remote.o] Error 1
> > gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/gdb-6.8/gdb'
> > 
> > But on my system the following is true for pid_t:
> >           typedef  long            pid_t;
> 
> I didn't see this problem when I tried to build on this platform.
> But I was using the CVS HEAD, so either this is already fixed there,
> or we're using different compiler versions (mine is based on 4.1).

I guess it's the compiler that makes the difference then:
gcc (GCC) 3.4.6

But I can't think of a way to get it fixed in a portable way, since it's
the only platform that has pid_t as long.

> 
> > Finally a minor issue is that gdb needs gmake to compile. It's not a
> > bug, but I thought that since autotools are being used, the Makefiles
> > would be portable to all makes. However the native make of Irix aborts
> > with a syntax error. Please tell me if you care on this, so that I'll
> > send you more details. 
> 
> Please send in the details. There was some talk about adding GNU make
> as a requirement to build GDB, but this may not happen.

Here is the error:
config.status: creating gdb.threads/Makefile
config.status: creating gdb.trace/Makefile
config.status: creating gdb.xml/Makefile
make: file `Makefile' line 296: Syntax error
*** Error code 1 (bu21)
*** Error code 1 (bu21)
*** Error code 1 (bu21)


And line 296, of the root Makefile:

   290  MAKEINFOFLAGS = --split-size=5000000
   291
   292  # ---------------------------------------------
   293  # Programs producing files for the HOST machine
   294  # ---------------------------------------------
   295
   296  AS = as
   297  AR = ar
   298  AR_FLAGS = rc
   299  CC = gcc
   300  CXX = g++


Dimitris