SLAU132Y September 2004 – June 2021
At the next level are the device-level drivers. They map directly to the low-level I/O functions. The default device driver is the HOST device driver, which uses the debugger to perform file operations. The HOST device driver is automatically used for the default C streams stdin, stdout, and stderr.
The HOST device driver shares a special protocol with the debugger running on a host system so that the host can perform the C I/O requested by the program. Instructions for C I/O operations that the program wants to perform are encoded in a special buffer named _CIOBUF_ in the .cio section. The debugger halts the program at a special breakpoint (C$$IO$$), reads and decodes the target memory, and performs the requested operation. The result is encoded into _CIOBUF_, the program is resumed, and the target decodes the result.
The HOST device is implemented with seven functions, HOSTopen, HOSTclose, HOSTread, HOSTwrite, HOSTlseek, HOSTunlink, and HOSTrename, which perform the encoding. Each function is called from the low-level I/O function with a similar name.
A device driver is composed of seven required functions. Not all function need to be meaningful for all devices, but all seven must be defined. Here we show the names of all seven functions as starting with DEV, but you may choose any name except for HOST.