cvs commit: src/sys/kern imgact_elf.c

[Marcel Moolenaar]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 03:45:39AM -0600, Scott Long wrote:
> >   Log:
> >   After maintaining previous behaviour in writing out the core notes, it's
> >   time now to break with the past: do not write the PID in the first note.
> 
> I've seen concern (maybe in private email, can't check at the moment)
> recently that loosing the PID info is undesirable.  Is there any way that
> it can be included again, maybe in something other than a PRSTATUS object?

Ideally you want one note that describes the process as a whole (let's
call it a P-note for now) and as many notes as there were kernel threads
for the process (let's call such notes T-notes).

A P-note would typically hold the PID. T-notes typically hold register
contents, as well as LWPIDs.

Creating a core file with P-notes and T-notes is easy enough. getting
binutils to grok them is non-trivial, not to mention that gdb needs
to be able to get to the information, which is as non-trivial as
binutils extracting it from the core file. So, introducing new notes
is a major effort. Extending existing notes is a major effort. Not
because it's hard to understand a new note, or read a new field from
a note, but because it's hard to have binutils save the information
and gdb use the saved information. You pretty much have to redesign
interfaces and I'm not touching that...

-- 
 Marcel Moolenaar	  USPA: A-39004		 marcel at xcllnt.net