Re: RFA: Document conventions for terminating query/set packet names

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 03:54:17PM -0700, Jim Blandy wrote:
> > I think the best solution would be to document that new packets should
> > not start with "qP" or "qL", and rename the relatively new qPart packet
> > to something else, like qXfer.  I don't really care whether GDB
> > continues to try the old qPart name; I think it may be recent enough
> > that we can drop it, but maybe not.  I believe the only thing it's used
> > for on HEAD is the ELF Auxv vector; I have other uses on various
> > branches, but none of them have been merged yet.
> >
> > Interested in any comments...
> 
> The protocol as currently documented is ambiguous.  Whatever we do in
> the long run, I think the manual ought to make some recommendation now
> to guide new implementations.  The 'count the hex digits' is one
> approach; another would be to deprecate qP altogether, in favor of
> qThreadExtraInfo.  That's what GDB prefers at the moment; it's been
> around since 2000.  qP dates to GDB's prehistory, but I'm pretty sure
> it's from around 1998; I was at Cygnus when it was discussed.

Could you explain why you prefer either of these changes - both of
which affect existing stubs - to my suggestion of renaming qPart and
the proposed qPacketInfo?

I might be missing something - but it seems virtually certain that
there are deployed stubs using qP that are going to live for a long
time - especially since RedBoot uses it and that tends to get flashed
into things!

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery