Re: [RFC - doc] Add note about the possibility of symbols getting moved across blocks

Eli Zaretskii
2012-04-26T14:14:16Z

> From: Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>
> Cc: sivachandra@google.com, gdb-patches@sourceware.org
> Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:54:15 -0600
>
> I think the idea is to warn Python developers that they should test
> their code with future versions if they use this feature.
> Normally we try to maintain compatibility, even when we've made mistakes.
> But in this case, we suspect we may make changes and we don't want to
> promise compatibility; but nor do we want to block this feature until
> the symbol tables are changed, since that may not happen for some time.

Maybe I simply miss something important here. The text in question
says this:

A @code{gdb.Block} is iterable. The iterator returns the symbols
(@pxref{Symbols In Python}) local to the block. Users using this
feature should keep in mind that future improvements to the internal
representation, of symbols and symbol tables, can move symbols across
blocks within a symbol table.

Are you saying that future changes will prevent the possibility to
get the symbols local to the block by iterating it? That's not what
the last sentence above seems to say. It says that the symbols might
be found in a different block, or something to that effect. At least
that's what I understand from reading it. If my understanding is
correct, how would my Python program that works today break with
future versions of GDB?