RE: [avr-gcc-list] port access with avr-gdb

[Theodore A. Roth]

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, Larry Barello wrote:

> I put this header together for the mega8...  I checked out accesses via a
> zero pointer and, indeed, the compiler did the right thing for all accesses:
> LDS/STS, IN, OUT and SBI/CBI when appropriate.
>
> Maybe GCC should consider replacing the archaic #define headers with
> structs, like this one?  Being able to do direct bit access is pretty nice
> (rather than PORTB |= BV(PORTB1);) Or, maybe just adding this struct to the
> current headers so either way could be used.

Just for my curiousity, why do you consider the #defines archaic? The
same concepts are used in Linux kernel headers.

A few things bother me about your header.

- It's not compatible with the current #defines (e.g. PORTB in your
  struct gets replaced by the PORTB #define)

- We already have a hard enough time adding headers for new devices (it
  takes quite a few interations to get all the bugs worked out). Writing
  structures like these by hand will be virtually impossible to do
  without bugs. Forget one register and all the following registers will
  be off by one (or more). That will be a fun bug to track down in a
  large application. ;-)

- If you were to use this structure to print out the values of all the
  io registers using a gdb command like this:

    (gdb) print *((struct _avr_regio *)0)

  you could get some nasty side effects. Reading some registers changes
  the state of the MCU (e.g. reading UDR). There's also no guarantee
  about what happens when you read/write a reserved register. (I vaguely
  remember hearing that some reserved registers have secret functionality
  used by Atmel during testing - I could be quite wrong about this
  though).

- The order of bit fields in a structure is not defined by the C
  standard. As such, you are never guaranteed which bit (0 or 7) the
  first bit field in the structure will be assigned to. This could vary
  from one compiler to another.

>
> Cheers!
>
> P.S. if attachments are stripped, I'll stick this somewhere public...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:  Dave Hylands
>
> One way to get the registers to show up symbolically, is to create a
> structure which has the same layout as the registers. Then you can access
> through a null pointer. This would allow you to see the registers in GDB.
> They still wouldn't show up I nthe linker map though.
>
> There are ways of making them show up in the linker map too. Just create an
> asm file which has each of the registers named. On the C side you'd have
> appropriate externs decalred.

Have you tried 'info io_registers' in gdb when using avarice?

You can set r0-r31 (and anything else that comes up with 'info reg') in
gdb using 'set var $r10 = EXP'. There's not currently a way to do this
for io registers, but it might be possible to extend the 'set var'
method to allow something like 'set var $PORTB = 0xff' in a similar way
to how we handle the 'info io_registers' command.  This would mean
making changes to gdb, avarice and possibly simulavr.

One other thing, doesn't the DWARF debugging format allow handling of
defines in the symbol table? I've been wanting to look into DWARF, but
just haven't had the time.

I've also used enums instead of #defines to allow getting the values in
the debugger but it doesn't always work the way you think.

---
Ted Roth
PGP Key ID: 0x18F846E9
Jabber ID: address@hidden