You cannot select more than 25 topics
Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
148 lines
7.5 KiB
HTML
148 lines
7.5 KiB
HTML
4 years ago
|
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
|
||
|
<html>
|
||
|
<!-- Copyright (C) 1988-2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
|
||
|
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
|
||
|
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the
|
||
|
Invariant Sections being "Free Software" and "Free Software Needs
|
||
|
Free Documentation", with the Front-Cover Texts being "A GNU Manual,"
|
||
|
and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below.
|
||
|
|
||
|
(a) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is: "You are free to copy and modify
|
||
|
this GNU Manual. Buying copies from GNU Press supports the FSF in
|
||
|
developing GNU and promoting software freedom." -->
|
||
|
<!-- Created by GNU Texinfo 6.4, http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/ -->
|
||
|
<head>
|
||
|
<title>Tracepoint Restrictions (Debugging with GDB)</title>
|
||
|
|
||
|
<meta name="description" content="Tracepoint Restrictions (Debugging with GDB)">
|
||
|
<meta name="keywords" content="Tracepoint Restrictions (Debugging with GDB)">
|
||
|
<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
|
||
|
<meta name="distribution" content="global">
|
||
|
<meta name="Generator" content="makeinfo">
|
||
|
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
|
||
|
<link href="index.html#Top" rel="start" title="Top">
|
||
|
<link href="Concept-Index.html#Concept-Index" rel="index" title="Concept Index">
|
||
|
<link href="index.html#SEC_Contents" rel="contents" title="Table of Contents">
|
||
|
<link href="Set-Tracepoints.html#Set-Tracepoints" rel="up" title="Set Tracepoints">
|
||
|
<link href="Analyze-Collected-Data.html#Analyze-Collected-Data" rel="next" title="Analyze Collected Data">
|
||
|
<link href="Starting-and-Stopping-Trace-Experiments.html#Starting-and-Stopping-Trace-Experiments" rel="prev" title="Starting and Stopping Trace Experiments">
|
||
|
<style type="text/css">
|
||
|
<!--
|
||
|
a.summary-letter {text-decoration: none}
|
||
|
blockquote.indentedblock {margin-right: 0em}
|
||
|
blockquote.smallindentedblock {margin-right: 0em; font-size: smaller}
|
||
|
blockquote.smallquotation {font-size: smaller}
|
||
|
div.display {margin-left: 3.2em}
|
||
|
div.example {margin-left: 3.2em}
|
||
|
div.lisp {margin-left: 3.2em}
|
||
|
div.smalldisplay {margin-left: 3.2em}
|
||
|
div.smallexample {margin-left: 3.2em}
|
||
|
div.smalllisp {margin-left: 3.2em}
|
||
|
kbd {font-style: oblique}
|
||
|
pre.display {font-family: inherit}
|
||
|
pre.format {font-family: inherit}
|
||
|
pre.menu-comment {font-family: serif}
|
||
|
pre.menu-preformatted {font-family: serif}
|
||
|
pre.smalldisplay {font-family: inherit; font-size: smaller}
|
||
|
pre.smallexample {font-size: smaller}
|
||
|
pre.smallformat {font-family: inherit; font-size: smaller}
|
||
|
pre.smalllisp {font-size: smaller}
|
||
|
span.nolinebreak {white-space: nowrap}
|
||
|
span.roman {font-family: initial; font-weight: normal}
|
||
|
span.sansserif {font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: normal}
|
||
|
ul.no-bullet {list-style: none}
|
||
|
-->
|
||
|
</style>
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
</head>
|
||
|
|
||
|
<body lang="en">
|
||
|
<a name="Tracepoint-Restrictions"></a>
|
||
|
<div class="header">
|
||
|
<p>
|
||
|
Previous: <a href="Starting-and-Stopping-Trace-Experiments.html#Starting-and-Stopping-Trace-Experiments" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Starting and Stopping Trace Experiments</a>, Up: <a href="Set-Tracepoints.html#Set-Tracepoints" accesskey="u" rel="up">Set Tracepoints</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html#Concept-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
|
||
|
</div>
|
||
|
<hr>
|
||
|
<a name="Tracepoint-Restrictions-1"></a>
|
||
|
<h4 class="subsection">13.1.10 Tracepoint Restrictions</h4>
|
||
|
|
||
|
<a name="index-tracepoint-restrictions"></a>
|
||
|
<p>There are a number of restrictions on the use of tracepoints. As
|
||
|
described above, tracepoint data gathering occurs on the target
|
||
|
without interaction from <small>GDB</small>. Thus the full capabilities of
|
||
|
the debugger are not available during data gathering, and then at data
|
||
|
examination time, you will be limited by only having what was
|
||
|
collected. The following items describe some common problems, but it
|
||
|
is not exhaustive, and you may run into additional difficulties not
|
||
|
mentioned here.
|
||
|
</p>
|
||
|
<ul>
|
||
|
<li> Tracepoint expressions are intended to gather objects (lvalues). Thus
|
||
|
the full flexibility of GDB’s expression evaluator is not available.
|
||
|
You cannot call functions, cast objects to aggregate types, access
|
||
|
convenience variables or modify values (except by assignment to trace
|
||
|
state variables). Some language features may implicitly call
|
||
|
functions (for instance Objective-C fields with accessors), and therefore
|
||
|
cannot be collected either.
|
||
|
|
||
|
</li><li> Collection of local variables, either individually or in bulk with
|
||
|
<code>$locals</code> or <code>$args</code>, during <code>while-stepping</code> may
|
||
|
behave erratically. The stepping action may enter a new scope (for
|
||
|
instance by stepping into a function), or the location of the variable
|
||
|
may change (for instance it is loaded into a register). The
|
||
|
tracepoint data recorded uses the location information for the
|
||
|
variables that is correct for the tracepoint location. When the
|
||
|
tracepoint is created, it is not possible, in general, to determine
|
||
|
where the steps of a <code>while-stepping</code> sequence will advance the
|
||
|
program—particularly if a conditional branch is stepped.
|
||
|
|
||
|
</li><li> Collection of an incompletely-initialized or partially-destroyed object
|
||
|
may result in something that <small>GDB</small> cannot display, or displays
|
||
|
in a misleading way.
|
||
|
|
||
|
</li><li> When <small>GDB</small> displays a pointer to character it automatically
|
||
|
dereferences the pointer to also display characters of the string
|
||
|
being pointed to. However, collecting the pointer during tracing does
|
||
|
not automatically collect the string. You need to explicitly
|
||
|
dereference the pointer and provide size information if you want to
|
||
|
collect not only the pointer, but the memory pointed to. For example,
|
||
|
<code>*ptr@50</code> can be used to collect the 50 element array pointed to
|
||
|
by <code>ptr</code>.
|
||
|
|
||
|
</li><li> It is not possible to collect a complete stack backtrace at a
|
||
|
tracepoint. Instead, you may collect the registers and a few hundred
|
||
|
bytes from the stack pointer with something like <code>*(unsigned char *)$esp@300</code>
|
||
|
(adjust to use the name of the actual stack pointer register on your
|
||
|
target architecture, and the amount of stack you wish to capture).
|
||
|
Then the <code>backtrace</code> command will show a partial backtrace when
|
||
|
using a trace frame. The number of stack frames that can be examined
|
||
|
depends on the sizes of the frames in the collected stack. Note that
|
||
|
if you ask for a block so large that it goes past the bottom of the
|
||
|
stack, the target agent may report an error trying to read from an
|
||
|
invalid address.
|
||
|
|
||
|
</li><li> If you do not collect registers at a tracepoint, <small>GDB</small> can
|
||
|
infer that the value of <code>$pc</code> must be the same as the address of
|
||
|
the tracepoint and use that when you are looking at a trace frame
|
||
|
for that tracepoint. However, this cannot work if the tracepoint has
|
||
|
multiple locations (for instance if it was set in a function that was
|
||
|
inlined), or if it has a <code>while-stepping</code> loop. In those cases
|
||
|
<small>GDB</small> will warn you that it can’t infer <code>$pc</code>, and default
|
||
|
it to zero.
|
||
|
|
||
|
</li></ul>
|
||
|
|
||
|
<hr>
|
||
|
<div class="header">
|
||
|
<p>
|
||
|
Previous: <a href="Starting-and-Stopping-Trace-Experiments.html#Starting-and-Stopping-Trace-Experiments" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Starting and Stopping Trace Experiments</a>, Up: <a href="Set-Tracepoints.html#Set-Tracepoints" accesskey="u" rel="up">Set Tracepoints</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html#Concept-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
|
||
|
</div>
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
</body>
|
||
|
</html>
|