GDB hardware breakpoints support

[changbindu]

Hi~
Dear vscode developers, could you considier to add hardware breakpoints support for gdb? hardware breakpoint is very usefull for kernel debugging since soft breakpoints sometimes is not working which requres modifying memory. For example, when debugging linux kernel using qemu debugger, 'hbreak' should be used instead of 'break', otherwise we may crash the kernel.

[WardenGnaw]

Thank you for your feedback. This is a duplicate of #1410

Can you please react to the issue to upvote the Feature Request.

[changbindu]

hello, Idont think this is a duplicate of #1410. #1410 is about data watchpoint breakpoints, while this one is for instruction hardware breakponit.

[changbindu]

For gdb, hardware bp command is hbreak, soft breakpoint is break.

[WardenGnaw]

@changbindu Thank you for the clarification. This will be dependent on VSCode providing a way through the UI to set hardware breakpoints.

[cdacamar]

👍 to this feature. It is one missing from VSCode which is the top reason keeping me from using VSCode full time.

[mhlau233]

check this
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=839263

[gabriserra]

Unfortunately, I am experiencing the same issue @dllexport was referencing. Using QEMU with KVM I can't place a breakpoint at start. So I really needed hardware breakpoint, at least at entry point.

Then, I think I've found a (ugly) workaround. If you are using a launch configuration with the MI interpreter, you can create a hardware breakpoint with setupCommands

launch.json

"setupCommands": [
                ... // your commands
                {
                    "description": "Hardware breakpoint at start",
                    "text": "-break-insert -h -f start", // specify your entry point label, mine was 'start'
                    "ignoreFailures": true
                }
            ],

You have also to add a breakpoint from the GUI because VS Code continues on breakpoint it can't recognize.