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

Guinevere Larsen
2025-12-01T16:50:24Z

On 11/28/25 6:20 AM, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> 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
>
I ended up talking to Andrew off-list about this, and he provided what I
think should be a better solution than either of our suggestions. We
could update the help text for the "set architecture" command to list
the options instead of introducing a new command.

I'll work on this and send a v2 when I can

--
Cheers,
Guinevere Larsen
It/she