Re: RFC: MI output during program execution

Bob Rossi
2005-08-15T23:05:32Z

> > Also, Bob said he was willing to work on doing this correctly.
>
> I'm lost. I'm not sure what correctly means in this case. I would like
> to get MI-like output (specifically about whether the execution is running
> or not) from CLI commands. Is Bob offering to do this?

Hi Nick,

What I offered to work on (because you mentioned you didn't have time),
is to improve the MI interface, by changing GDB's internals to alert
other parts of GDB (MI, maybe annotate=2,3) when certain conditions or
states have changed. For instance, breakpoints, frame's, threads, or
inferior state.

By doing this, the MI layer can then check to see what has changed after
each command is run, including -interpreter-exec console commands. The
MI layer can then issue data to the FE depending on what has changed,
and potentially what the FE requested for changes.

This might require changing the MI output syntax to add a new section
for changes like above. I'm not sure about this yet.

Does this proposed solution sound reasonable to you? Will this solve all
the needs that you have? To be honest, CGDB also won't work without
these changes. However, with theses changes, MI might be getting close
to being very usable, thus, deprecating annotations. Do you agree?

To be realist, I expect these changes to take several months. Especially
since Mark Kettenis asked that all the deprecated functions be removed
first. Hopefully the time won't be an issue.

Thanks,
Bob Rossi