[lldb-dev] Simultaneous multiple target debugging

[Matthew Gardiner]

Hi Colin,

Multiple target debugging is a massive interest to us at CSR. We design 
chips with various processor types (e.g. kalimba, XAP, 8051, ARM etc) 
and on several of our chips we have multiple-processors. There are lots 
of combinations of setups that we have either already done, or are 
actively experimenting on. Generally, we have heterogenous setups (e.g. 
XAP+8051, or 4*XAP+kalimba+8051) etc.

I see that lldb already supports the concept of a target list, an active 
target and manual switching between current targets. However, as Colin 
alludes, there are several features associated with multiple-target 
which require control from a higher-level.

What we currently have in our existing debuggers is options of the form, 
"I'm debugging targets A and B, if A stops do I want B stop as well?". 
The answer to that question is very much specific to that user's current 
debug scenario. Of course, getting B to stop if A does, is best 
implemented in the hardware, and typically a register will be available 
as a mechanism to configure this feature. In our (CSRs) world probably 
one of the processors will have access to the associated hardware block, 
and our debugger will talk to this target to access the feature.

So, of course, if non-active target(s) stops whilst stepping/running the 
active one, some notification needs to be passed up, informing the debug 
session controller of this, and determining whether or not to switch 
active target.

Greg and Jim both mentioned using the Platform class as the place to 
implement this kind of thing. However, does the Platform not only deal 
in homogenous entities? Is it correct to use this concept to control 
different processor families. With my limited lldb architectural 
knowledge, I would have thought that the most likely candidate to 
control this is the Debugger object itself.

Matt


Colin Riley wrote:
> Has anybody done any work on integrating features into LLDB to allow 
> for 'meaningful' simultaneous multiple target debugging? There are 
> various scenarios in which this is a very valuable feature:
>
> 1) coprocessor debugging, in single-process systems (i.e, embedded DSP 
> alongside say a host CPU core)
> 2) graphical debugging, e.g. games: ideally you want to be able to 
> debug the CPU code alongside any GPU workgroups, and have a single 
> interface to any shared resources such as memory.
>
> We've done work like this in the past to LLDB, it's not been 
> contributed back because we couldn't do so for commercial reasons (and 
> it's not in a state to contribute back, either). However in the future 
> I think this will become a 'killer app' feature for LLDB and we should 
> be planning to support it.
>
> At the moment we can have multiple targets, processes etc running in 
> an LLDB session. However I am failing to see any system for 
> communication and interpretation of multiple targets as a whole. If we 
> take the DSP/CPU situation, I may be watching a CPU memory location 
> whilst at the same time single-stepping through the DSP. It's 
> currently undefined and a bit unknown as to how this situation would 
> work in LLDB as stands. From what I can see, it's quite hard to use 
> the current independent target framework to achieve a meaningful 
> debugging session.
>
> It's as though we'd want some sort of session object, that can take 
> multiple targets together and understand how they operate as to 
> achieve some sort of well-defined behaviour in how it's debugged. I.e, 
> in the DSP/CPU scenario, the session object would understand the DSP 
> has access to the CPU memory, and as such, if we're currently on the 
> DSP single stepping, it would allow a CPU watchpoint event through to 
> the DSP session, with an ability to switch target.
>
> There are many more items we'd need to allow communication between. A 
> quick example, we have an LLDB version here that supports non-stop 
> mode debugging (see 
> https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Non_002dStop-Mode.html 
> - and we _will_ contribute this back). At the moment stepping through 
> one thread and a breakpoint happens in another is a bit nasty: LLDB 
> simply switches to whatever thread id is greater. When this sort of 
> usability issue exists in a single-target fashion, we may need to look 
> at extracting this out into some sort of policy system that targets 
> (and, these theoretical session objects) can use to decide how to 
> handle certain event situations.
>
> Apologies if this is a bit of a brain dump. It's quite a complex 
> concept, which is why I think dialogue needs to start now as it's 
> something as I've mentioned we are actively doing at Codeplay, but 
> when the time comes to push upstream, want to do so in a way the 
> community thinks is valuable. There may be other viewpoints, like 
> 'super debugservers' that can manage multiple targets and spoof a 
> single target to LLDB, for example.
>
> Any other opinions or thoughts out there? :)
>
> Colin
>



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