Re: [PATCH] gdb, configure: Add disable-formats option for configure

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Andrew Burgess <aburgess@redhat.com>
> Cc: guinevere@redhat.com, gdb-patches@sourceware.org
> Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2024 15:26:25 +0100
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > If I'm right, then there are two separate aspects to "target": on the
> > one side, the ability to start/stop executables, insert breakpoints
> > and watchpoints, etc., and OTOH the ability to read and process debug
> > info used by that target, implement frame unwinders, etc.  Are we
> > currently conflating these into a single notion of "target", and if
> > so, will the proposed changes include or exclude both parts of each
> > "target"?
> 
> I agree with you about "target" having two components, the lower level
> stuff, and the higher level stuff.
> 
> File format support, being able to read from file, only (I think)
> impacts higher level functionality.  But just reading the file isn't (I
> claim) enough, we need the higher level functionality in order to really
> "understand" the file contents.
> 
> My claim then is that being able to remove the file format support will
> actually make the GDB slightly better (in some cases) as GDB will no
> longer be able to read a file which it is then unable to correctly
> process the contents of.

Thanks.

So given this situation, what exactly will removing, say, mipsread.o
give me?  What will the GDB I build be unable to do that it was able
to do before?

And a more practical question: if I want to build GDB that will run on
GNU/Linux and should be able to debug Linux executables natively and
MS-Windows executables via gdbserver, which formats should I specify
with this new --enable-formats option?

See, I think these are the questions that the readers of the manual
will ask themselves, and we should have the answers there for them.