Re: Is this a bug or as designed?

["Amker.Cheng" <amker dot cheng at gmail dot com>]

Hi:

Sorry being so late to reply your last message.
I tried your patch(es) on weekly release gdb-weekly-CVS-6.8.50.20090210.tar.bz2
and found following problems.

1
It seems macro I386_WATCHPOINTS_IN_TARGET_VECTOR was introduced into
file nm-i386.h some time after version 6.8.
If your patch applied, It undefines macro TARGET_CAN_USE_HARDWARE_WATCHPOINT
in nm-i386, which breaks gdb when debug on i386 with target exec.
I checked sources and found that gdb won't push target win32_ops till
the inferior's
first running, leading to hardware watchpoint not supported at first,
like following outputs:

>./gdb.exe
GNU gdb (GDB) 6.8.50.20090209-cvs
Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i686-pc-cygwin".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.
(gdb) file dummy.exe
Reading symbols from
/cygdrive/g/work/gdb/gdb-updated/native-target/bin/dummy.exe...done.
(gdb) awatch a
Target does not support this type of hardware watchpoint.
(gdb)
-----------------------------cut here
There are several other macros influenced by
I386_WATCHPOINTS_IN_TARGET_VECTOR too,
But I think at least TARGET_CAN_USE_HARDWARE_WATCHPOINT should be moved out of
the #ifndef I386_WATCHPOINTS_IN_TARGET_VECTOR ... #endif context.

I'm afraid this problem also exist under linux now.


2
as why hardware watchpoint not working in windows gdbserver,
It is because windows gdbserver does not implement the "Z" packets right now.
So it still unavailable after applying your patch.
I guess maybe the reason is no one will debug win32/linux applications remotely.

Anyway I found it's quite easy to support "Z" packets for windows gdbserver
just by reusing following functions in file i386-nat.c:

  i386_insert_watchpoint,
  i386_remove_watchpoint,
  i386_stopped_by_watchpoint,
  i386_stopped_data_address,

Thanks

Regards.

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 8:30 PM, Pierre Muller <muller@ics.u-strasbg.fr> wrote:
> This is a limitation of windows native GDB 6.8
> I wrote two patches that should solve that issue
> for next release if they are accepted.
>
> http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2009-02/msg00194.html
> and
> http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2009-02/msg00206.html
>
>  If you are willing to test these out,
> you will need to get GDB cvs HEAD source
> and apply the two patches above.
>
>
> Pierre Muller
> Pascal language support maintainer for GDB
>
>
>
>> -----Message d'origine-----
>> De : gdb-owner@sourceware.org [mailto:gdb-owner@sourceware.org] De la
>> part de Amker.Cheng
>> Envoyé : Wednesday, February 11, 2009 12:59 PM
>> À : gdb@sourceware.org
>> Objet : Is this a bug or as designed?
>>
>> Hi All:
>>   I got a problem about the behavior of gdb 6.8.
>>   When remote debugging win32 inferior with gdb and gdbserver(both
>> running on the same machine),
>> I found that gdb always missing watchpoints. just like following
>> outputs:
>>
>> ----------------start here
>> GNU gdb 6.8
>> Copyright (C) 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>> License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
>> <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
>> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
>> There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show
>> copying"
>> and "show warranty" for details.
>> This GDB was configured as "i386-pc-cygwin".
>> (gdb) file a.exe
>> Reading symbols from /cygdrive/e/work/gdb/native-
>> target/bin/a.exe...done.
>> (gdb) target remote  :2345
>> Remote debugging using :2345
>> [New Thread 1980]
>> Reading symbols from /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/ntdll.dll...done.
>> Loaded symbols for /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/ntdll.dll
>> Reading symbols from /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/kernel32.dll...done.
>> Loaded symbols for /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/kernel32.dll
>> Reading symbols from /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll...done.
>> Loaded symbols for /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll
>> Reading symbols from /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/advapi32.dll...done.
>> Loaded symbols for /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/advapi32.dll
>> Reading symbols from /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/rpcrt4.dll...done.
>> Loaded symbols for /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/rpcrt4.dll
>> 0x7c921231 in ntdll!DbgUiConnectToDbg () from
>> /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/ntdll.dll
>> (gdb) awatch b
>> Hardware access (read/write) watchpoint 1: b
>> (gdb) c
>> Continuing.
>>
>> Program exited normally.
>> (gdb) q
>> ------------------cut here
>>
>>
>>
>> According to above output, gdb just let inferior run to end normally,
>> although it said
>> hardware watchpoint was set successfully.
>>
>> I checked the remotelogfile and found there is no "Z" packets at all.
>> Further more, I
>> think there is something wrong when handling hardware watchpoint in
>> gdbserver for win32,
>> because the debug register is not set at all in gdbserver.
>>
>> BTW It is sure that there are access to b in the inferior program and
>> There is no such problem with native debug with GDB under win32+cygwin.
>>
>> Thanks for help!
>> Regards.
>
>