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

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Fri, May 05, 2006 at 12:25:44PM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 10:24:22AM -0700, Jim Blandy wrote:
> > All right.  I think one of my subconscious motivations was that I
> > didn't like breaking a new feature for an older, deprecated feature. 
> > But this isn't about "fairness" to features; it's about gettings
> > things working without breaking too much stuff.  So I'll go along with
> > retiring the qL and qP prefixes.
> 
> Thanks.  Aside from Eli's question I'm fine with this.
> 
> I'm wondering if we should mark the qC prefix "bad" too.  I realize
> there's already qCRC: and I'm not suggesting we rename that.  But of
> the two other stubs I checked today, both supported qC and neither
> checked that the C was at the end of the packet.
> 
> Amusingly enough, one of them also supported qCRC:, and had a hack to
> check for that first.

Jim, did you have any opinion on this?  Otherwise, here's a proposed
patch.  It recommends not starting new packets with qC, and clarifies
that stubs should check for the end of a packet even for packets
without a separator.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery

2006-05-09  Daniel Jacobowitz  <dan@codesourcery.com>

	* gdb.texinfo (General Query Packets): Recommend not starting
	new packets with qC and clarify.

Index: gdb.texinfo
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/src/gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo,v
retrieving revision 1.328
diff -u -p -r1.328 gdb.texinfo
--- gdb.texinfo	5 May 2006 22:48:14 -0000	1.328
+++ gdb.texinfo	9 May 2006 20:40:01 -0000
@@ -23101,11 +23101,14 @@ foos) or @samp{Qacme.bar} (for setting b
 The name of a query or set packet should be separated from any
 parameters by a @samp{:}; the parameters themselves should be
 separated by @samp{,} or @samp{;}.  Stubs must be careful to match the
-full packet name, in case packet names have common prefixes.  New
-packets should not begin with @samp{qP} or @samp{qL}@footnote{The
-@samp{qP} and @samp{qL} packets predate these conventions, and don't
-have any terminator for the packet name; we suspect they are in
-widespread use in places that are difficult to upgrade.}.
+full packet name, and check for a separator or the end of the packet,
+in case two packet names share a common prefix.  New packets should not begin
+with @samp{qC}, @samp{qP}, or @samp{qL}@footnote{The @samp{qP} and @samp{qL}
+packets predate these conventions, and have arguments without any terminator
+for the packet name; we suspect they are in widespread use in places that
+are difficult to upgrade.  The @samp{qC} packet has no arguments, but some
+existing stubs (e.g.@: RedBoot) are known to not check for the end of the
+packet.}.
 
 Like the descriptions of the other packets, each description here
 has a template showing the packet's overall syntax, followed by an