Re: hardware support for gdb?

[Andrew Cagney <cagney at gnu dot org>]

> I have an ARM board which comes with its own boot monitor, which just
>
> brings
>
> > > up the board. I download RedBoot to bring the target up as well as to
> > > connect with gdb. My question is, what is minimal support required from
>
> a
>
> > > target hardware so that an application like RedBoot can work on it to
> > > connect with gdb and provide debugging.
>
> > Some sort of "serial" communications channel (from a simple serial
> > device through to mini-tcp on an ethernet device).
> >
> > Andrew
>
>
> Really!! Does even single stepping also not require any hardware support?

I'm not sure what you mean by hardware support.  The instruction set 
architecture needs to provide a breakpoint instruction.  A single-step 
mechanism is useful but not an absolute requirement - GDB can use 
software singlestep (although I suspect that code has bitrotten).

Andrew