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Re: RFA: gdbarch_free
> > There are no uses for this yet, except in some code that's not ready
> > for release yet.
> >
> > 2000-02-28 Jim Blandy <jimb@redhat.com>
> >
> > * gdbarch.sh: Emit a definition and declaration for gdbarch_free,
> > a companion to gdbarch_alloc, which allows a gdbarch init function
> > to free partially-built gdbarch structures.
> > * gdbarch.c, gdbarch.h: Regenerated.
>
> Jim,
>
> Can you expand a little.
>
> >From memory, I figured that if an _initialize* function failed to create
> a gdbarch the process was somewhat hosed and calling internal_error()
> was probably the best thing to do.
Whenever one provides an allocation function, one should always
provide a corresponding free function --- it gives you more freedom in
the way you allocate the object.
Why I'm freeing a gdbarch structure isn't really anyone's business but
my own. The contract of the init function is simply that it returns
null or a valid gdbarch; who knows how I might go about creating that
gdbarch. I might build it myself, for all you know.
The real story:
gdbarch_update calls the initialization function and checks the return
value. If it's zero, it says "gdbarch_update: Target rejected
architecture". I have an architecture with several variants, and I
want to return zero when the variant (info.bfd_arch_info->mach)
doesn't match anything I recognize.
This situation could arise if someone adds support for a new variant
of my architecture, but hasn't updated GDB yet.
I could check for this earlier, before calling gdbarch_alloc, but I'd
like to avoid having two `if' structures that need to stay in sync.