From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 5212 invoked by alias); 23 Jun 2009 16:57:20 -0000 Received: (qmail 5199 invoked by uid 22791); 23 Jun 2009 16:57:20 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.7 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,MSGID_FROM_MTA_HEADER,SPF_PASS X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mtagate6.de.ibm.com (HELO mtagate6.de.ibm.com) (195.212.29.155) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:57:13 +0000 Received: from d12nrmr1607.megacenter.de.ibm.com (d12nrmr1607.megacenter.de.ibm.com [9.149.167.49]) by mtagate6.de.ibm.com (8.14.3/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n5NGvBQH181952 for ; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:57:11 GMT Received: from d12av02.megacenter.de.ibm.com (d12av02.megacenter.de.ibm.com [9.149.165.228]) by d12nrmr1607.megacenter.de.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.13.8/NCO v9.2) with ESMTP id n5NGvBCi3702848 for ; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:57:11 +0200 Received: from d12av02.megacenter.de.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d12av02.megacenter.de.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.13.3) with ESMTP id n5NGvAss014321 for ; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:57:11 +0200 Received: from tuxmaker.boeblingen.de.ibm.com (tuxmaker.boeblingen.de.ibm.com [9.152.85.9]) by d12av02.megacenter.de.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with SMTP id n5NGv9ON014293; Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:57:09 +0200 Message-Id: <200906231657.n5NGv9ON014293@d12av02.megacenter.de.ibm.com> Received: by tuxmaker.boeblingen.de.ibm.com (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:57:09 +0200 Subject: Re: Per-type architecture (Re: [10/15] Basic value access routines) To: dje@google.com (Doug Evans) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:57:00 -0000 From: "Ulrich Weigand" Cc: drow@false.org (Daniel Jacobowitz), gdb-patches@sourceware.org In-Reply-To: from "Doug Evans" at Jun 23, 2009 08:55:39 AM MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2009-06/txt/msg00616.txt.bz2 Doug Evans wrote: > On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Ulrich Weigand wrote: > > In fact, if it weren't that > > we want to avoid excessive dependencies on XML libraries, I'd argue we should > > just parse XML into a standard DOM tree representation as provided by those. > > > > Looking at this this way, serialization/deserialization of XML into and out > > of those "DOM tree" structures *should not* involve too much GDB specifics > > like GDB private data structures, but simply follow the self-describing > > property of the XML format ... > > OOC, what "excessive dependencies" are you referring to? > It seems odd to want to avoid dependencies on libraries, libraries are good. > [I'm sure there's more to the story here, hence the question. :-)] Well, the concern was in fact really about adding a dependency on an external library, if I recall correctly. GDB always used to be pretty self-contained, you don't need to install any external libraries in order to build or use it. While libraries are good from a developer's point of view, dependencies add hassles for users ... Daniel initially suggested to add the expat sources to the src tree in order to keep that property, see the original discussion here: http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2006-07/msg00231.html This approach was then discarded in favor of using an external expat library installed by the user, but only for "non-essential" purposes: if that library does not exist, it must still be possible to build and use GDB even if some non-essential GDB features then no longer work: http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2006-08/msg00048.html That's what I meant by "excessive dependency": if we were to add library calls to core GDB components with no fallback option, this would *require* presence of the library, or else GDB will not build at all any more. Up to now we've always said we don't want to do that. Bye, Ulrich -- Dr. Ulrich Weigand GNU Toolchain for Linux on System z and Cell BE Ulrich.Weigand@de.ibm.com