Re: [PATCH 1/2] gdb: introduce command "info architecture"

Maciej W. Rozycki
2025-11-28T09:21:46Z

On Thu, 27 Nov 2025, Guinevere Larsen wrote:

> > Is it the semantics documented in the manual since forever (search for it
> > and when it appeared there) that you disagree with? I don't know what
> > `info unwinder' is about, but maybe someone got it wrong too and it should
> > be a `show' subcommand instead.
>
> I know that this is what the manual and the help text say about "info", but
> that's not how the command has been used since at least the 1999 commit:
>
> commit c906108c21474dfb4ed285bcc0ac6fe02cd400cc (tag: gdb-4_18-branchpoint)
> Author: Stan Shebs <shebs@codesourcery.com>
> Date:   Fri Apr 16 01:35:26 1999 +0000
>
>     Initial creation of sourceware repository
>
> in which the commands "info copying" and "info warranty" were added. The show
> version of these commands were only added in 2011.

I can't help with that. Also clearly the inconsistency has been noticed
and fixed (with the old commands retained for backwards compatibility).
That doesn't mean we ought to create more inconsistencies.

NB the repo goes far beyond 1999 (refer commit 1730ec6b1848 for earlier
history), although those older commits are often inconsistent owing to CVS
conversion issues, and there were clear attempts to get this sorted long
before and somehow lost in the mist of history. E.g. commit a7d50b0adfcd,
commit a3bb247ef0a2, commit 440d9834411b, and many more (search for "info
warranty"). FWIW myself I've used GDB since 1994.

Maciej