Re: RFC: add ability to "source" Python code

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:07:46 -0800
> From: Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>
> Cc: tromey@redhat.com, bauerman@br.ibm.com, drow@false.org,
> 	pedro@codesourcery.com, gdb-patches@sourceware.org
> 
> Let's see what everyone thinks. I have several issues that I'd like
> to discuss before we can finalize a proposal:

My responses below.

>   1. If we have filename-extension detection (controlled by a setting),
>      do we need the "-p" switch at all? If we agreed that it's an
>      acceptable limitation that python scripts in GDB should have
>      a .py extension, then we don't really need the .py switch,
>      do we?  This in turn would side-step the question of what to do
>      with -p when python wasn't compiled in.

I'm okay with this, but I think Tom had some valid reasons for having
Python scripts that don't have a certain extension.

>      Or maybe, how about changing the semantics of that setting
>      to apply to files that are detected as python (regardless of
>      how the detection is performed): In one case these files are
>      sourced as python script, but on the other, these files are
>      still treated as GDB scripts. When GDB was built with python,
>      then this switch can be used to turn the new feature off,
>      whereas if no python was available, the setting would be stuck
>      to the value where files are sourced as GDB scripts.

Fine with me.

> Now that I've written all this and that it has given me a chance
> to think this over a little more, I like the idea of falling back
> to GDB scripts less and less. So much so that I'm wondering whether
> using a different command than "source" might be better? "pysource"
> for instance?

I think there is already a way to do that: the `python' command.  I
think the `source' proposal was intended to treat Python scripts more
similar to GDB scripts, and I generally agree with that idea,
i.e. that we should have a single command that sources scripts.