[Mono-dev] Mono Debugger Patch that allows Remote Debugging

[Martin Baulig]

Hello Harald,

I had a look at your remote debugging patch and unfortunately, I have
some bigger problems with it.  There are basically three major issues
which need to be resolved before I can integrate this into the main
debugger release.

I.) Libbfd

I don't like modifying the libbfd which is shipped with the debugger
very much.  This makes it very complicated to upgrade the bfd to a newer
version in future.

I've already been asked about upgrading libbfd because this may become
necessary if we add ppc support.  Because of that, it's important to
keep the bfd changes to an absolute minimum.  It should also be easy for
other people (not just me) to replace the bfd, for instance if someone
wants to implement support for a new architecture.

One solution for this is probably adding wrappers for each of the
functions into backend/arch/bfdglue.c and do the changes there.

II.) The if conditionals

I'm not very happy about the fact that you basically put all of
backend/server/*.c inside `if' conditionals.

Most of these functions are already invoked via the `InferiorVTable', so
I'd prefer if we could put all the remote debugging functions into a
separate file and then simply replace the vtable when remote debugging.

If you need to invoke any methods which aren't in that vtable, we can
simply add them.

III.) Using arch-specific code in x86-linux-ptrace.c

You can't use any architecture specific code in x86-linux-ptrace.c, like
accessing fields inside the `INFERIOR_REGS_TYPE'.

This file is shared between i386 and x86_64, so `regs->ebx' won't even
compile on the x86_64.

These are the major issues, there are also a few minor cosmetic ones:

* Please don't use a global variable `remove_debugging_flag', put it
  inside the `ServerHande' instead.

* Please don't copy the private struct `InferiorHandle' from one .c file
  into another; we can either put it into a header file or add public
  accessor functions.

* Do we really need to add the breakpoint code to thread-db.c ?

I would really like to integrate this into the main debugger, but please
understand that I also need to ensure long-term maintainability and code
cleanness.

Martin

-- 
Martin Baulig - martin at novell.com
Novell GmbH, Düsseldorf
GF: Volker Smid, Djamel Souici; HRB 21108 (AG Düsseldorf)