Mirror of the gdb-patches mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Stan Shebs <stanshebs@earthlink.net>
To: gdb-patches@sourceware.org
Subject: 'info os' additions again
Date: Tue, 08 May 2012 22:49:00 -0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <4FA9A2FA.3090307@earthlink.net> (raw)

Back in December and January, we had some spirited discussion of how to 
handle additions to 'info os', triggered by 
http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2011-12/msg00829.html , which adds 
a bunch of useful info types for Linux.  Anyway, upon rereading the 
thread, I'm not at all clear on where there was consensus, and if so, 
what the consensus was.

 From what I gather, nobody has much of a problem with GDB gathering and 
presenting the info; by passing it through GDB, we can replace raw 
numbers with symbols, get it into history, add to breakpoint command 
lists, etc.

The main sticking point seems to be syntax.

I tend to favor "info os <type> <subtype>..." because it fits the 
progressive refinement that is a hallmark of GDB commands - the user can 
remember it as "info, and it's OS-related, but I just want semaphores".  
The user doesn't have to consider what OS name might be expected, "os" 
always works to connect to the class of OS-specific info displays.

However, we also have an alternate tradition of "info <target> 
<type>...", including "info dos", "info w32", "info spu", etc.  By that 
tradition, Linux-specific info should be "info linux", and if there were 
BSD OS info, it would be "info bsd", and so forth.  It's simpler to 
document, because the manual can just have a section for each subcommand 
that enumerates the subsubcommands that are available.  Unfortunately 
for consistency, we've also had "info os" for several years.

So there are several questions at hand:

1. What to do with the submitted patch?  ("info os" or "info linux" or 
something else)

2. What policy to set for the future?

3. Change existing info commands to conform to a policy, or allow 
inconsistencies for the sake of backward compatibility?

Stan


             reply	other threads:[~2012-05-08 22:49 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-05-08 22:49 Stan Shebs [this message]
2012-05-08 23:55 ` Joel Brobecker
2012-05-09  4:46 ` Eli Zaretskii
2012-05-09 21:17   ` Stan Shebs
2012-05-10  5:21     ` Eli Zaretskii
2012-05-10 12:22       ` Pedro Alves
2012-05-10 18:13         ` Stan Shebs
2012-05-10 18:18           ` Pedro Alves
2012-05-10 18:42             ` Stan Shebs
2012-05-10 18:59               ` Pedro Alves
2012-05-10 21:07                 ` Stan Shebs
2012-05-11 18:30                   ` Pedro Alves
2012-05-12  1:33                     ` Matt Rice
2012-05-14 14:52                       ` Joel Brobecker
2012-05-11 20:25           ` Marc Khouzam

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=4FA9A2FA.3090307@earthlink.net \
    --to=stanshebs@earthlink.net \
    --cc=gdb-patches@sourceware.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox