[PATCH 0/6] Integrate GDB and SystemTap

[Sergio Durigan Junior]

Hello guys!

Long time no see :-).

Tom and I have been working on this thing for a while now, and we think
it's time to show the results to you.  This patch's first purpose is to
extend GDB so that it can recognize SystemTap probes in userspace
applications.  If you are not familiar with SystemTap, or with the
concept of probes in userspace apps, please take a look at
http://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/AddingUserSpaceProbingToApps .

We took the liberty to split this patch into 6 logical units, which are:

1) Changes to BFD, in order to properly extract useful information from
the `.stapsdt.base' note section in the binary file.

2) Changes to linespec, in order to introduce the concept of
`pre_expanded sals';

3) Changes to the mechanism of internal variables, in order to be able
to create the necessary variables for the SystemTap probes;

4) New work.  Basically, this patch adds the necessary routines to deal
with SystemTap probes.  You will functions that deal with probes'
arguments, testcases, documentation, modifications in the tracepoint
mechanism, and so on.

5) Changes to make exception handling use SystemTap probes.

6) Make longjmp handling use SystemTap probes.

It is important to notice that we haven't tested patch (6), and will NOT
check it in until some system chips a glibc with these probes.  Because
of that, this submission can be considered an RFC.

I hope you like this patch.  Comments are welcome, as usual.

Thank you very much,

Sergio.