why is gdb 5.2 so slow

[Andrew Cagney]

> Both.  Things we do wrong:
> - GDB can't handle being told that just one thread is stopped.  If we
> could, then we wouldn't have to stop all threads for shared library
> events; there's a mutex in the system library so we don't even have to
> worry about someone hitting the breakpoint.  We could also use this to
> save time on conditional breakpoints; if we aren't stopping, why stop
> all other threads?

[my guess] If the condition fails, we need to thread-hop.  If the 
condition succeeds we need to stop all threads anyway.

Knowing that shlibs are wrapped in a mutex is definitly something to 
exploit.

> - Removing all breakpoints, that's just wrong, there's a test in
> signals.exp (xfailed :P) which shows why.  We should _only_ be removing
> any breakpoints at the address we're hopping over.
> 
> - No memory cache by default.  thread_db spends a LOT of time reading
> from the inferior.

Based on a verbal description I was given, I believe that the current 
dcache model is slightly wrong.  It should behave more like the regcache 
vis:
- ask for one register, get back the register file
hence:
- ask for one byte, get back one page, OR
- ask for one byte, mmap the entire target process address space
That way the target decides.

HP, long ago, was proposing zero copy target memory accesses.

> - No ptrace READDATA request for most Linux targets to read a large
> chunk.  I keep submitting patches for some other ptrace cleanups that
> will let me add this one to the kernel, and they keep hitting a blank
> wall.  I may start maintaining 2.4 patches publicly and see if people
> use them!

Uli (glibc), KevinB, MichaelS, and I happened to be in the same room and 
talked about this.  /procfs was suggested as an alternative path.  For 
ptrace() Uli indicated something about running out of register arguments 
to use across a system call.

> - Too many calls to thread_db in the LinuxThreads case.  It's a nice
> generic layer but implemented such that the genericity (? :P) comes
> with a severe cost in performance.  We need most of the layer; I've
> seen the NGPT support patch for GDB, and it's very simple, precisely
> because of this layer.  But we could do staggeringly better if we just
> had a guarantee that there was a one-to-one, unchanging LWP<->thread
> correspondence (no userspace scheduling etc.).  Both LinuxThreads and
> the new NPTL library have this property.  Then we don't need to use
> thread_db to access the inferior at all, only to collect new thread
> information.

Apparently that guarentee is comming.  Solaris, for instance, is moving 
back to 1:1.  My instinct is that reduceing the system calls will make a 
far greater improvement than trimming back glibc.

> Want a sample of how much difference this last one makes?  In
> combination with a bit of my first bullet above, that means we don't
> have to stop all threads at a new thread event?  Use gdbserver instead
> of GDB.  Its completely from-scratch threads support does not work with
> NGPT or any other N:M threading library, but for N:N it is drastically
> faster.  The spot that's still slowest is shared library events,
> because we can't report that just that thread stopped and ask if we
> should stop others (or better, be told by GDB that the breakpoint at
> that address is a don't-stop-all-threads breakpoint).
> 
> That's just off the top of my head.  I think there are a few more.
> 
> 
>> On a bright note, I've also been told that a future Linux Kernel is 
>> going to support a stop all threads primative so that at least some of 
>> the above stupidity can be eliminated.
> 
> 
> Some "future"...  I've seen the code in question, I think; it's nice
> but no one has had the time to push it properly, so it won't be until
> 2.7 at the earliest, I'd say.

Andrew