I've been using linux for about a year now
and I'm still amazed gdb still can't debug the simple
x86 fpu stack. If you don't believe me, type
"info float" under gdb. At first glance, you might
think that its just a gdb problem. It isn't.
Linux doesn't support it, or rather, the
ptrace function doesn't support the dumping of the
fpu state. I can't imagine how Linux has evolved
without having a serious fpu debugger. Oh well.
I really enjoy linux, so I've decided to fix
this problem. As it turns out, I discovered that a
"real" company called Absoft had to do their own kernel
hack for ptrace so that they could develop and debug
their Fortran product. This is unacceptible!!! Linux
needs to be real operating system with a real way
to debug it's fpu hardware state.
So, I have the Absoft hack and I've looked
at the problem. The hack is not complete. It assumes that you have an
x86 fpu, so this would break on a
386 system.
So, who wants to help me out, and how does one
get a patch into the official linux source code? Does
anyone really care about this? Thanks for your help.
Regards,
Steve
-- Stephen Polkowski Centaur Technology Austin, TX (512) 418-5730