Re: CLI and GDB/MI documentation patch

Nick Roberts
2006-05-13T09:07:31Z

> > Because if people write a front end that relies on a feature then
> > understanably they are upset when it is changed or removed, just as I was
> > when it appeared that annotations would be removed. The one advantage of
> > Emacs long release cycle is that it gives you more time to get everything
> > right before its released. GDB goes out about every six months along
> > with an expectation that its behaviour will some level of maintenance.
>
> I agree with you completly. What if we released mi3 with the
> next release of GDB. We could remove the direct CLI commands then. I
> think there would be some advantages to releasing mi3 anyways.

AFAICS the only changes to MI since 6.4 have been to add the fullname field
to breakpoint related commands and to generate an error record for directly
entered CLI commands. I think we only need to bump the number when an
incompatible change change is made that will break existing front ends.

I also think it will prove too difficult to maintain functionality for old
levels in general (mi0 or mi1 might be an exception) but clearly new front
ends will be able to work with more than one level if they want (old ones will
break with the new level). We did start to talk about what changes could be
made within one level: new commands, extra fields etc which I think we need to
document so that developers know what to expect. I think at some stage we
should also document our thoughts changing MI level.

--
Nick http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob