Re: RFA: Document conventions for terminating query/set packet names

["Jim Blandy" <jimb@red-bean.com>]

On 5/3/06, Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org> wrote:
> On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 03:54:17PM -0700, Jim Blandy wrote:
> > > I think the best solution would be to document that new packets should
> > > not start with "qP" or "qL", and rename the relatively new qPart packet
> > > to something else, like qXfer.  I don't really care whether GDB
> > > continues to try the old qPart name; I think it may be recent enough
> > > that we can drop it, but maybe not.  I believe the only thing it's used
> > > for on HEAD is the ELF Auxv vector; I have other uses on various
> > > branches, but none of them have been merged yet.
> > >
> > > Interested in any comments...
> >
> > The protocol as currently documented is ambiguous.  Whatever we do in
> > the long run, I think the manual ought to make some recommendation now
> > to guide new implementations.  The 'count the hex digits' is one
> > approach; another would be to deprecate qP altogether, in favor of
> > qThreadExtraInfo.  That's what GDB prefers at the moment; it's been
> > around since 2000.  qP dates to GDB's prehistory, but I'm pretty sure
> > it's from around 1998; I was at Cygnus when it was discussed.
>
> Could you explain why you prefer either of these changes - both of
> which affect existing stubs - to my suggestion of renaming qPart and
> the proposed qPacketInfo?
>
> I might be missing something - but it seems virtually certain that
> there are deployed stubs using qP that are going to live for a long
> time - especially since RedBoot uses it and that tends to get flashed
> into things!

It's my impression that renaming qPart will also affect existing stubs
--- isn't that so?  From looking around, it seemed to me that there
weren't too many implementations of qP, so I'm presuming that, if
something is to be broken, that'd be the one to break.  But if you
know that RedBoot is more widely installed in inaccessible places,
then that's something I didn't realize.