Re: Available registers as a target property

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow at false dot org>]

On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 11:49:00PM -0400, Paul Schlie wrote:
> Understood, but given that these semi-customizable synthesizable processors
> still need to have their configurations described to multiple tools, it
> still seems that adopting a more centralized specification scheme which
> enables their configuration descriptions to be more conveniently accessible
> by whatever tools may choose to leverage them seems like a good thing; as
> opposed to having creating discrete depositories/methods unique to each
> tool.
> 
> Which is why potentially broadening the use of BFD's seemed potentially
> reasonable, but do recognize it would correspondingly require broader
> coordination which could complicate the effort beyond reason. So possibly
> as the parameters required to sufficiently describe the logically visible
> debug model of an arbitrarily configured processor subsystem becomes clear,
> these same parameters could be considered to form the basis of a more
> centralized target configuration description which may ultimately be
> utilized by other tools.

Personally I don't think it's very useful.  I'm not sure why you call
them "semi-customizable"; the point is that they are, in fact, fully
customizable.

ARM's approach to this problem was to encapsulate the description
in the module server, which is distributed with the target
configuration.  Anything that wants the configuration can query the
target for it.  That seems a lot more useful to me - rather than
centralizing the registry, distribute it locally to every target it
describes.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC