[PATCH 0/9] Disassembler opcode display and text alignment

[Andrew Burgess]

Ping!

Thanks,
Andrew

Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com> writes:

> This series makes two related changes to GDB's disassembler.  Both
> changes flow naturally from having GDB make use of libopcodes
> bytes_per_line and bytes_per_chunk presentation hints that are set on
> a per-architecure basis with each call into the disassembler.
>
> The end result of this change is that GDB will now display instruction
> opcodes in the same way that objdump does.
>
> For x86-64 there's no change in the way that opcode bytes are
> presented.  Now due to some special case, it's just that how GDB lays
> out instruction opcodes just happens to match how libopcodes requests
> that the opcodes be laid out.
>
> For other architectures, risc-v, powerpc, arm, aarch64, etc, this is
> not the case, and I (personally) think objdump does a better job of
> presenting the information that GDB does; the instruction opcodes will
> be grouped together based on the instruction size, and potentially
> byte-swapped so they appear in the instruction's natural order.
>
> Making use of the display hints also allows for better alignment of
> the disassembly text when opcodes are being printed.
>
> I have proposed that this new behaviour become the default for
> 'disassemble /r', and I've added a new flag 'disassemble /b' which
> allows the user to access the old behaviour.
>
> But, if people feel strongly that the old 'disassemble /r' should not
> be changed, I can place the new behaviour under a new flag.
>
> Let me know your thoughts,
>
> Thanks,
> Andrew
>
> ---
>
> Andrew Burgess (9):
>   gdb/doc: improve description of --data-disassemble opcodes output
>   gdb/testsuite: new test for -data-disassemble opcodes format
>   gdb/disasm: read opcodes bytes with a single read_code call
>   gdb: disassembler opcode display formatting
>   gdb: make gdb_disassembly_flag unsigned
>   gdb/doc: fix column widths in MI compatibility table
>   gdb/doc: update syntax of -data-disassemble command arguments
>   gdb/mi: some int to bool conversion
>   gdb/mi: new options for -data-disassemble command
>
>  gdb/NEWS                                |  12 ++
>  gdb/cli/cli-cmds.c                      |   6 +
>  gdb/disasm-flags.h                      |   3 +-
>  gdb/disasm.c                            |  55 +++++++--
>  gdb/disasm.h                            |   3 +
>  gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo                     | 137 ++++++++++++++++-----
>  gdb/mi/mi-cmd-disas.c                   | 105 ++++++++++++----
>  gdb/record.c                            |   3 +
>  gdb/testsuite/gdb.mi/mi-disassemble.exp | 153 ++++++++++++++++++++----
>  gdb/testsuite/lib/mi-support.exp        |  27 +++++
>  10 files changed, 417 insertions(+), 87 deletions(-)
>
> -- 
> 2.25.4