RE: [dsdp-dd-dev] Re: FW: Load/save/fill memory operations

["Williams, Ted" <ted.williams@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Samantha> "My concern here is performance.  Writing and reading memory
could take a long time.  I am not sure if verifying the write operation
to a memory block should be an UI's responsibility."

Agreed, it probably shouldn't be the UI's responsibility to actually
perform the verify (write, read, compare). Any ideas on how to pass a
verify flag to the back end? It's unfortunate that
IMemoryBlockExtension.setValue takes a byte array; a MemoryByte array
would cleanly allow for a VERIFY_ON_WRITE attribute.

John> "Regarding the expression support, one thing that springs to mind
is the need to support address space. We'll need to keep that in mind
when designing the feature."

I've been wondering about address spaces, too. Should the import/export
dialogs contain UI for selecting the address space? Or should the
operation use the selected IMemoryBlock and assume it was created with
the desired address space? I think this fails when the user modifies the
address field in the dialog.

John> "We'd want the memory view to truly reflect what's on the target,
not what the upper levels of the debugger expect it to be."

This is a good point. On the whole, I'm concerned that the memory change
notification design may need broader scope. When the user (or another
plugin) modifies a memory mapped register or a variable within displayed
memory, I'd like (as a user preference) the memory view to automatically
refresh and display the changed memory. At the same time, I don't want
to see unnecessary updates (target io traffic). The
IMemoryBlockExtension adds support for monitoring memory blocks, but
this is not sufficient if the rendering reads memory outside of the
range represented by the MemoryBlock. 

Has there been any discussion on memory "find"? When necessary,
searching for memory (up/down, literal/regex) can be quite valuable.

John> "Let's see if Ted wants ownership of this. If not, you can assign
it to me."

I'd be happy to provide the initial implementation, but I'll count on
John to provide feedback. :)

ted