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"A word-aligned memory transfer mechanism is needed"
- From: Jim Blandy <jimb at red-bean dot com>
- To: gdb at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:58:56 -0800
- Subject: "A word-aligned memory transfer mechanism is needed"
The description of the 'm' packet in (gdb)Remote Serial Protocol says:
Neither gdb nor the stub assume that sized memory transfers are
assumed using word aligned accesses. FIXME: A word aligned memory
transfer mechanism is needed.
This mysterious admonition is repeated in the description of the
reply. The text seems to date back to the original check-in of the
docs.
At first I assumed that this was trying to say that ADDR isn't
necessarily word-aligned. I think that's worth stating clearly.
But then I realized that it might be trying to say that a read or
write of a word-sized value to a word-aligned memory location may not
be carried out by the stub using a word-sized access; it is free to
use the appropriate number of byte accesses. In other words, this
packet doesn't provide the kind of control needed to access some
memory-mapped I/O devices.
Do folks agree that this is what that meant to say? If we're not sure
what it means, we should take it out.