en_us

GDB and SystemTap integration improving linker-debugger interface

It is really nice to see something you did in a project influence in future features and developments. I always feel happy and proud when I notice such scenarios happening, and this time was no different. Gary Benson, a colleague at Red Hat who works in the GDB team as well, has implemented a way of improving the interface between the linker and the debugger, and one of the things he used to achieve this is the GDB <-> SystemTap integration that I implemented with Tom Tromey 2 years ago.

So long, Ambassadors...

No, I am not leaving the Fedora Project, I am just leaving (or taking a break, depending on how you look) its Ambassadors program. I am still the co-maintainer of the GDB package, and will contribute to the development of the distribution since it is also my job. However, after a few months trying to become more involved with the Fedora community (specifically with the Brazilian/LATAM community), I became so disappointed that the only logical action for me now is to step back.

Document Freedom Day 2013 in Campinas -- São Paulo -- Brazil

Hi, there! This is the report of the Document Freedom Day event that took place in Campinas, São Paulo state, Brazil. I will talk a little bit about how we (keep reading to know who “we” are!) organized it, and the conclusions that can be drawn to help for the next edition. Organization The DFD (or Document Freedom Day) 2013 in Campinas was organized by the LibrePlanet São Paulo (link in pt_BR) group.

Bye bye, Juvia!

Once upon a time, there was a guy who cared about what other people could say about what he was writing on his blog. Well, like all fairy tales, this one also has a happy ending! In case you didn’t make the connection, the “guy” is me :-). And also in case you didn’t notice: my blog does not have a comment system anymore. My reasoning for that is simple, and I can make a small list with the major points that made me take this decision:

Misunderstanding the Free Software Philosophy

This will probably be one of those controversial posts, but I really cannot just be silent about a behaviour that I am constantly seeing around me. Since my childhood, I am fascinated by the power of the words. I always liked reading a lot, and despite not knowing the grammar rules (either in pt_BR or en_US, the former being my native language, the latter being the only idiom I can consider myself fluent in), I am deeply interested in what words (and their infinite meanings) can do to us.

HEADS UP: Comment system is offline temporarily

Hi there. This little post is just a heads about an issue that I am facing with the comment system that I run. Unfortunately, you will not be able to post comments on the blog until, at least, next Wednesday (November 21). For those of you wondering which comment system I use, it is called Juvia. Due to privacy concerns, I chose not to use anything like Disqus because it tracks you and your comments (read their privacy policy if you want more details).

GDB and SystemTap Probes -- part 3

Hi everybody :-). I finally got some time to finish this series of posts, and I hope you like the overall result. For those of you who are reading this blog for the first time, you can access the first post here, and the second here. My goal with this third post is to talk a little bit about how you can use the SDT probes with tracepoints inside GDB. Maybe this particular feature will not be so helpful to you, but I recommend reading the post either way.

GDB and SystemTap Probes -- part 2

I tell you this: it is depressing when you realize that you spent more time struggling with blog engines than writing posts on your blog! It’s been a long time since I wrote the first post about this subject, and since then the patches have been accepted upstream, and GDB 7.5 now has official support for userspace SystemTap probes :-). Yay! Well, but enough of cheap talk, let’s get to the business!

First Blog post, again...

Well, well. I really wasn’t entirely satisfied with Octopress, so I decided to change the blog engine yet another time!! Here it is, using blohg, a blog engine based on Mercurial (yeah, I know, nothing is perfect), and made by a Brazilian :-). I intend to resume my activities in the blog pretty soon, especially because I have many things to share here. First of all, I will convert the old posts from Markup to rst.

GDB and SystemTap probes -- part 1

After a long time, here we are again :-). With this post I will start to talk about the integration between GDB and SystemTap. This is something that Tom Tromey and I did during the last year. The patch is being reviewed as I write this post, and I expect to see it checked-in in the next few days/weeks. But let’s get our hands dirty… SystemTap Userspace Probes You probably use (or have at least heard of) SystemTap, and maybe you think the tool is only useful for kernel inspections.

My workflow with GDB and git -- part 1

This post is actually a “reply” to Gary Benson’s Working on gdb post. I have been working with GDB for quite some time now, and even though the project officially uses CVS (yes, you read it correctly, it is CVS indeed!) as its version control system, fortunately we also have a git mirror. In the end, what happens is that almost every developer uses the git mirror and just goes to CVS to commit something.