XDB
Introduction
I were working on a GBA emulator for the gp32 some years ago using
the MMU to create a memory map similar to the GBA so i could run
the code native on the gp32. It was quite painful to debug however,
and i wrote a small in system debugger which i could access through
the UART. But it wasn't enough, i wanted full control over the machine.
And thats how i started reading up on the JTAG standard and how the
Embedded ICE works.
After a while i had a little JTAG tool that i could use for some basic
operations such as loading executables into RAM and running them.
And since i already had some interest in debugging i went ahead and
started studying the (then) DWARF2 specifications to be able to extract
some debug information.
As the years passed on i implemented more and more functionality and
today i got myself a neat little debugger which i use everyday for
my hobby development.
Current status
The work is slowly moving forward, i add features everytime i stumble on
something i would need for my hobby hacking.
Targets supported: ARM7, ARM9, BF533.
(More to come here...)
Features
First, i think it should be mentioned that we're talking about a
commandline
tool here, similar to good old GDB, so there won't be any screenshots.
And it's mainly targeted to debug embedded targets via JTAG or other
connections.
Ofcourse it's possible to implement a target driver for pretty much any
target, but the toolbox is aimed at remote lowlevel embedded debugging.
Source level debugging.
Since DWARF3 information is read and processed some basic source level
debugging can be done, such as setting breakpoints at source lines,
examining variables and listing source.
While memory watching is supported for ARM/BF533 there are no source
level link there.
Scripting
Releases
There are currently no proper public release, but i have been thinking
about opening up some kind of public access to the SVN server.
We'll see.
In the mean time, if someone would like to have a look at it, perhaps
to do some hacking, i can be contacted at: mithris(at)misantrop.org.
(More to come here...)
