Re: 'info os' additions again

[Stan Shebs <stanshebs@earthlink.net>]

On 5/8/12 9:44 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Tue, 08 May 2012 15:49:30 -0700
>> From: Stan Shebs<stanshebs@earthlink.net>
>>
>> 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.
> My personal take of this is that (since quite naturally, most of the
> new features introduced into GDB are Linux-specific), "info os" will
> rapidly become a hodgepodge of Linux-specific commands, with only a
> few supported on other platforms.  At that point, "info os" will
> simply be a grossly misleading name, confusing to users of other
> platforms and hard to describe clearly in the documentation.

I suppose that's possible, although when originally scoping this 
particular addition, I looked over the list of OS objects and included 
everything that seemed of interest to user-space programs.  There are 
many kind of additional objects available via /proc, but they are 
control and systemwide maintenance things that have very little to do 
with debugging an app, and I'm not seeing that anyone could make a 
compelling argument that in-GDB access would be of value.

>
> FWIW, I never understood the reason why others prefer "info os".

I'm sure a lot of it comes from the same-but-differentness of the Unix 
family.  I myself have my right hand on a Macbook and left hand on a 
Dell running Linux, and so if I'm sticking to Posix API, I want GDB to 
work the same on the two.

Stan