Re: [RFA] Displaced stepping just enable in non-stop mode

Eli Zaretskii
2008-10-16T08:13:14Z

> From: Pedro Alves <pedro@codesourcery.com>
> Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:07:42 +0100
> Cc: gdb-patches@sourceware.org,
> "Joel Brobecker" <brobecker@adacore.com>,
> "Michael Snyder" <msnyder@vmware.com>
>
> Eli, can I ask you to go over the help strings and the documentation in
> the patch below? Do they look OK-ish?

They are OK, but:

. The doc strings use too long lines, which will look ugly on your
garden-variety 80-column terminal.

. In the gdb.texinfo, don't put "set" and "show" commands in the
same @item/@itemx, because the text below them says "Control
whether...", which is inappropriate for the "show" command.

. "Displaced stepping" is really a bad name for this feature. Is it
widely accepted or did we invent it?

. This text:

+@cindex non-stop mode, and @samp{set can-use-displaced-stepping}
+@item set can-use-displaced-stepping auto
+This is the default mode. @value{GDBN} will use displaced stepping
+only if non-stop mode is active (@pxref{Non-Stop Mode}) and the target
+architecture supports it.

needs to be rephrased in the last sentence, to disambiguate the
"supports it" part: a reader could be confused to think that "it"
refers to the non-stop mode, not to displaced stepping.

. Why isn't it better to use displaced stepping, if supported, even
if non-stop mode is not in effect? I think the linkage between
the two is confusing and unnecessary.

. I agree with Daniel's criticism of the can-use-displaced-stepping
option's name. An obvious first step towards making it shorter
would be to remove the "can-" prefix.

Thanks.