This patch series is to change GDB and GDBserver builtin target
descriptions more flexible, by removing pre-generated ones. Instead,
these builtin target descriptions can be got lazily and dynamically.
GDB builtin target descriptions are created from initialize_tdesc_*
functions in features/*.c files, while GDBserver builtin target
descriptions are generated from regformats/*.dat files.
This patch series changes both GDB and GDBserver to create target
description dynamically from features, instead of using pre-generated
target descriptions. This patch series only convert x86-linux (
including i386-linux, amd64-linux and x32-linux) target description
to demonstrate the usefulness of the change.
Once one target architecture switches to the new flexible target
description,
- only need xml feature files under gdb/features directory. All
existing target description xml files can be kept for the tests.
Add new xml feature file if we want to support the new feature,
but don't need to add new target description xml files.
- All existing gdb/regformats/*.dat are not used, but kept for
the tests.
This is the V2, and V1 is here
https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2017-05/msg00291.html,
the differences are,
- Change target descriptions for both GDB and GDBserver,
- Generate functions creating features from xml feature file
instead of feature name, so that don't have to worry about
different features with the same name (different features
with the same name still have different file names).
- Extend the changes for i386-linux to x86-linux (including,
{i386,amd64,x32}-linux)
The big design change in V2 is that use generate c files from
xml feature files, and use generate c files in both GDB and
GDBserver.
In next step, I want to remove the duplication of target
descriptions in GDB and GDBserver, and share more code on
creating x86-linux target descriptions in GDB and GDBserver.
I also want people give comments on how to do unit/self
tests in GDBserver, see patch 14. The purpose of this patch
series is still to demonstrate the design, so the changelog,
NEWS entry, and doc may be incomplete. I'll complete them
later.
Regression tested on x86_64-linux (both -m64 and -m32),
native and gdbserver, on aarch64-linux native and gdbserver.
ppc64-linux, native.