Howto: Porting the GNU Debugger

Practical Experience with the OpenRISC 1000 Architecture

Embecosm Application Note EAN 3
Issue 2, November 2008.

This application note is aimed at engineers porting GDB to a new architecture for the first time.

The GNU Debugger software distribution includes a guide for users and a 100-page guide to its internals. The latter is a document primarily aimed at those wishing to become developers of new functionality in GDB, rather than engineers wishing to port the existing functionality to a new architecture. Whilst an admirable document, it is not the place to find the "big picture" about how GDB works, is far from complete and in many places out of date.

This application note fills the gap between the user guide and the GDB internals document for engineers porting GDB to a new architecture. It is based on the author's experience porting GDB 6.8 to the OpenRISC 1000 architecture, and includes practical examples from that work.

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This application note is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.

The OpenRISC 1000 version of GDB 6.8 is provided as a code patch to the standard GDB 6.8 source. It is available as a free download in Embecosm Software Package ESP 3, GDB 6.8 for the OpenRISC 1000 Tool Chain.