[cdt-dev] Enhancement proposal for register handling

[Marc Khouzam <marc.khouzam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

 

I would like to propose an enhancement to the Expressions view for CDT Debug.  We are focusing on the

Juno release right now, but since we discussed the idea in the CDT monthly call, I'm sending this proposal now.

 

I created a wiki page with more details and screenshots (http://wiki.eclipse.org/CDT/EnhancedExpressions), as well as

a bug (https://bugs.eclipse.org/381754).  Below is a summary.

 

==

 

Currently, the Registers view for CDT/GDB shows all registers in a flat list.  For targets with a large number of

registers this is not very user-friendly.

 

I propose to support pattern-matching within the Expressions view to allow users to easily create groups of

registers. For example:

$*  would display all  registers

$st[0-5]  would show  $st0, $st1 , ... $st5 

 

The user would simply type the _expression_ in the "Add new _expression_" box as she would for

any other _expression_.

 

 

Although this feature is focusing on registers (only _expression_s starting with $  will allow patterns)

it may be a nice enhancement to extend this to other expressions.  If that was also supported, a user

could do such things as create an _expression_ 'myArray[20-120] to only show a subset of an array; many

other examples can be imagined as well.

 

With such possibilities in mind, the prototype does allow for the _expression_: *   which will automatically

show all local variables and arguments of the selected stack frame.

 

Comments and suggestions are very welcomed.

 

Thanks

 

Marc