• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.393-409
• /
• 2003

In this paper, we present a multi-task debugging environment for Qplus-T embedded-system such as internet information appliances. We will propose the structure and functions of a remote multi-task debugging environment supporting environment effective ross-development. And, we are going enhance the communication architecture between the host and target system to provide more efficient cross-development environment. The remote development toolset called Q+Esto consists to several independent support tools: an interactive shell, a remote debugger, a resource monitor, a target manager and a debug agent. Excepting a debug agent, all these support tools reside on the host systems. Using the remote multi-task debugger on the host, the developer can spawn and debug tasks on the target run-time system. It can also be attached to already-running tasks spawned from the application or from interactive shell. Application code can be viewed as C/C++ source, or as assembly-level code. It incorporates a variety of display windows for source, registers, local/global variables, stack frame, memory, event traces and so on. The target manager implements common functions that are shared by Q+Esto tools, e.g., the host-target communication, object file loading, and management of target-resident host tool´s memory pool and target system´s symbol-table, and so on. These functions are called OPEn C APIs and they greatly improve the extensibility of the Q+Esto Toolset. The Q+Esto target manager is responsible for communicating between host and target system. Also, there exist a counterpart on the target system communicating with the host target manager, which is called debug agent. Debug agent is a daemon task on real-time operating systems in the target system. It gets debugging requests from the host tools including debugger via target manager, interprets the requests, executes them and sends the results to the host.