From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 28725 invoked by alias); 7 May 2004 15:33:40 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 28639 invoked from network); 7 May 2004 15:33:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO nevyn.them.org) (66.93.172.17) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 7 May 2004 15:33:39 -0000 Received: from drow by nevyn.them.org with local (Exim 4.32 #1 (Debian)) id 1BM7M2-0005sP-4S; Fri, 07 May 2004 11:33:38 -0400 Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 15:33:00 -0000 From: Daniel Jacobowitz To: Michael Elizabeth Chastain Cc: kettenis@chello.nl, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: [patch] configure.in: revert osf5.1 no-noncurses special case Message-ID: <20040507153338.GA22511@nevyn.them.org> Mail-Followup-To: Michael Elizabeth Chastain , kettenis@chello.nl, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com References: <20040507151048.CA6424B104@berman.michael-chastain.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040507151048.CA6424B104@berman.michael-chastain.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i X-SW-Source: 2004-05/txt/msg00202.txt.bz2 On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 11:10:48AM -0400, Michael Chastain wrote: > Hi Mark, > > Yeah, I was unhappy about reverting the patch, but in the long run, > the problem is not really specific to osf5.1, so it's better to > solve the real problem. > > > 4. Unly use ncurses if the user passes --with-ncurses to configure. > > I prefer this solution the best. We've had similar requests for > readline from people who want to use the system readline library > or their own readline library rather than our bundled readline. > And this way a clueful user has the maximum usability, while a > no-customization user has a good chance of getting a working gdb > and even a gdbtui. I think this is a bad idea. Remember, there's this huge base of installed systems where ncurses is the default library and/or installed in a system directory. Why penalize them? > The advantage of the current scheme (option #0) is that it might work > on some systems. I'm unhappy with #0 because I know that it doesn't > work on my hp test drive system. As I understand it, you are unhappy > with #1 for the converse reason: the configury can automatically make > a bad choice on some systems. But the reason it doesn't work on your HP test drive system is a broken or extremely unusual installation of ncurses, so I don't want to make policy decisions for GDB based on it. Personally, I don't see the point in worrying about this. If you've got a broken ncurses installation - one where the linker finds -lncurses but gcc doesn't, or vice versa, is broken in my book - it's your problem. I believe that checking for whichever header we are going to use is the appropriate decision. Then, if that fails, either error out or disable gdbtui. This is what the thousands of other software packages using non-system libraries do. -- Daniel Jacobowitz