Re: GDB 17.2 release update -- 2026-04-25

[Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>]

Hi Andrew,

> On these last two issues, I took a look at Tom's patches, and ended up
> posting an alternative proposal (to both issues) here:
> 
>   https://inbox.sourceware.org/gdb-patches/cover.1777645161.git.aburgess@redhat.com
> 
> I let Tom know, and he seems generally happy with this proposal, see:
> 
>   https://inbox.sourceware.org/gdb-patches/4300deb1-765a-48fe-9d3f-69122748547d@suse.de
> 
> though this wasn't a full approval for the patches.

Thanks for the update and your help with this issue.

> My take is that these two bugs should NOT hold up the 17.2 release.
> They have both existed ever since the debuginfod prompt was added back
> in GDB 12, so holding up this point release seems pretty arbitrary.
> 
> In addition, triggering this bug is (IMHO) pretty unlikely (though not
> impossible), but more importantly, it can only trigger early in a debug
> session.  Once the user has done something to trigger the debuginfod
> prompt they are "safe" from this bug, which means the pain of living
> with this is 17.2 (as with all earlier releases) is pretty low; yes GDB
> might crash, but the user will not have done much in their session by
> that point, so they'll not have lost much.

That was my sentiment as well. We kept the patches on the list
with a possible hold of a week or two on the premisse that we already
had patches up for review and that the fix was very safe. Now that
the story looks little more complex, and with your added context about
how long this issue has been present, means it no longer makes sense
to hold the 17.2 release up.

I will create the release tomorrow or Sunday.

-- 
Joel