Green Hills challenges “rudimentary” Linux debug

According to Green Hills, the Linux development software in its MULTI tool suite will address the “rudimentary” state of many debuggers for Linux, which it said were “difficult to learn, setup, and use and lack the powerful control and visibility that modern electronic systems demand”.

Green Hills said it is possible with MULTI to control and debug all aspects of an embedded Linux system, including the Linux kernel, kernel threads, user mode threads and processes, and interrupt service routines (ISRs), all from a single tool, in a single window or in separate windows per instance.

“MULTI enables developers to quickly master the most difficult device development challenges, including kernel panics, execution and data flows between user processes and the kernel, early hardware bring-up, device drivers, and performance analysis and tuning,” said Green Hills.

Capabilities of Green Hills Software’s Linux debugging and development suite include:

• Support for all modern embedded Linux versions, regardless of download source or Linux support vendor, and including Android distributions
• Leverages the Green Hills Probe JTAG device for “stop-mode” debugging of kernel, ISRs, and user mode applications
• Leverages I/O peripheral connections for “run-mode” debugging of applications, where the CPU is never halted
• Fully multicore/SMP aware
• Advanced visualization and manipulation of Linux kernel data structures, including shared memory regions, semaphores, and message queues
• Advanced run control features available in stop-mode and run-mode enable seamless debugging of newly created threads and processes, zero-overhead breakpoints to enable visibility without intrusiveness, and the ability to debug system calls based on specific calling threads
• Full visibility into application adjuncts, including shared objects and libraries, loadable kernel modules, and other intercommunicating applications
• Software browsing, editing, and exploration capabilities
• Support for GNU GCC C/C++ compilers with optional support for Green Hills C/C++ compilers

MULTI for Linux is available today for ARM and Power Architecture, with other CPU architectures available upon request.