byte word and int(32) safe memory access?

["Robin den Hertog" <robin at den-hertog dot org>]

hey,

I would like to be able to send bytes words and int's that are
read/written as such to my embedded target.
(some fpga's and other peripheral hardware need their registers to be
read/written in one action).
the protocol doesn't support this, what is more the way the `m' packet
is defined it is unsure how it will handle the read at all.
the gdb user manual says this about the m|M packet:

The stub need not use any particular size or alignment when gathering
data from memory for the response; even if addr is word-aligned and
length is a multiple of the word size, the stub is free to use byte
accesses, or not. For this reason, this packet may not be suitable for
accessing memory-mapped I/O devices.

I suggest a new u|U packet.
(i suggest the packet uses binary data as some of the targets this
could be used for don't have powerful processors and any(cpu) overhead
we can spare is good in my book)
i suggest using the first 3 bits of the first byte to describe the
size of the data (000 for 8 bts 001 for 16 bits 010 for 64 bits, wich
leaves plenty of room for the future)
Then the last 5 bits to indicate the length.
Then 2 bytes for the start address, and then the data (if any, none
for read commands).

i might be implementing something like this for my internship project
(it would be nice if it was an accepted packet in the gdb protocol,
instead of a add on that doesn't make it in).
i say might because the decision to use gdb hasn't been made yet, but
gdb is supported by more and more companies to talk to their chips so
it would be nice to use gdb.
the alternative is a simple custom application that allows remote
read/write access, and possibly gdb server as well to allow for
debugging.
you could say i would be misusing gdb but the potential for faster
development and testing (trough a scripting enviroment thath sends
read/write commands to gdb) is there.

what do you think?

Robin

-- 
Never fear, for I is here!