GDB 8.0 release/branching 2017-03-20 update

Joel Brobecker
2017-03-20T20:16:34Z

Hello everyone,

We are now roughly at our target branching date. Looking at the list
of PRs marked for 8.0, we still have:

* gdb/21187 Static linking of libstdc++ and libgcc with GDB leads to
broken exception handling on AIX platform

I think Nitish is having a little difficulties with
the submission process, but the patch is looking cleaner.
Hopefully it'll be accepted soon.

* gdb/21169 GDBServer on ARM can crash the inferior while single stepping

Any update on this one? The previous status was:

| Considered blocking, but only if it doesn't delay the release
| unreasonably.
|
| Antoine is this PR's champion.

* gdb/14441 Need to support DW_TAG_rvalue_reference_type

I think the part that we need for 8.0 is on the verge of
getting in. Keith is on top of it, as far as I can remember.
Keith?

In the "maybe" section, we have:

* [TimWiederhake] new "record" Python API should be finalized before we release
(otherwise, we might be have a compatibility issue if we don't design
them well from the start)

https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2017-03/msg00023.html

Looks like the discussion is still fairly active, and I am starting
to think that we might be putting too much pressure to get this done
before 8.0.

What's the status of this API? Is this something entirely new?
Or something that replaces an API which was already contributed?
If it's a replacement, was the older API part of a previous release?
Looking at the NEWS file, it looks like it's something which
would be new. So we could decide to not rush this into 8.0,
and wait for 8.1, when we're more certain of the API we'd like.
It would also give it another 6 months of use where we can
easily change the API, before it's part of a release, and therefore
harder to change.

* [TimWiederhake] Build issue when using Python 2.6.x

What's the status of that patch? My questions were answered,
but was the patch reviewed?

https://www.sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2017-03/msg00053.html

Thanks!
--
Joel