Re: [RFC] Variable objects for STL containers

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 11:27:08AM +1300, Nick Roberts wrote:
> This is not any STL, but Gcc's STL.  Gdb and Gcc are both part of the GNU
> project so should possibly have a special relationship.

I agree, but I don't think this is the way to do it.  I've found that
the easier we make it to hack on this sort of thing (in this case,
support for custom display of objects), the more likely we are to get
people who are experienced in the right areas to help out.  Suppose we
support this as a bunch of text scripts, ignoring what language
they're written in.  Then they can ship with GDB for old versions of
GCC but transition to shipping with GCC for new versions of libstdc++;
and I think the libstdc++ maintainers will be happy to improve them
and keep them up to date.

> I don't really understand how the python support will be implemented but I
> don't see why variable objects for STL containers should require Python
> libraries to be present.

Script engines are just tools.  If we want to use tools, I think it's
OK to have a dependence on them.  For practical reasons, I believe we
should use generally portable tools and (for now, at least) support
building a functional GDB without them; that's the decision we made
for expat.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery