[Discussion] Floating Point registers should be shown in natural format not hex

[omarArm]

Floating point registers available in the registers scope of the variables window are all shown in hex. This is of course due to the fact that in the method handleVariableRequestRegister the function call await mi.sendDataListRegisterValues(this.gdb, {fmt: 'x', frameRef,}); has the argument x, which causes all registers to be viewed in hex.

For showing values of floating point registers as floats, I had the idea of changing the fmt argument to N. However, that would cause core registers to be viewed in decimal, which is not an ideal solution either.

One of the problems, imo, is that GDB doesn't have a command in which users can request register readings for a specific register.

@asimgunes @cwalther @jonahgraham any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[cwalther]

My expectation would be that integer registers follow the global output radix. I am not sure about floating point registers, they could either follow as well, or I guess always showing them in decimal would be okay too, though ideally there should be options to show them as hex-float (0xabc.dep123) or hex-raw (0xdeadbeef).

In a quick test it seems like the N format actually achieves this – integers follow the radix, floats decimal. So I would be in favor of your proposed change. And there is also format r that might be useful as an option, although I don’t understand what it does – it gives me "0x0000000000000000" for a register that has value "0.50020094712860796" in format N, for which I would expect a raw value of something like "0x3fe001a56aab0f20".

One of the problems, imo, is that GDB doesn't have a command in which users can request register readings for a specific register.

According to docs, -data-list-register-values does take a register number, or is it something else that you are missing?

[omarArm]

I did test the format N and it does seem to fix most of our problems. Only issue would be that core registers would probably appear in integer format, which I would say, won't make most users happy.

I wasn't aware that -data-list-register-values accepts register number, I misread the documentation.

Maybe the best approach would be, given that -data-list-register-values does accept register number, the adapter can request core registers with the format X and all other registers with the format N. Or request values twice, once with format X and another with format N, but show one of them as a tooltip?

[cwalther]

As I said I would be fine with having to use Set Global Output Radix to Hex to see registers in hex (in fact I would find it rather inconsistent if they wouldn’t obey Set Global Output Radix to Decimal), but I haven’t done any user research on it, so if you have reason to believe that your users won’t like that, then the tooltip solution would seem acceptable to me (but is it technically feasible?). Or always show both values concatenated. Or add separate commands Set Register Radix to Hex/Decimal.