Re: [patch/rfc] mention C++ support in NEWS

[David Carlton <carlton@kealia.com>]

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:31:44 +0200, "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@elta.co.il> said:
>> From: David Carlton <carlton@kealia.com>
>> Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 10:15:27 -0800

>> +* C++ nested types and namespaces
>> +
>> +GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
>> +improved.  We recommend that you use the DWARF 2 debugging format to
>> +get the full benefit from this; this is the default for recent
>> +versions of GCC on most platforms.
>> +

> IMHO, this text is okay, but perhaps it will sound much more useful if
> you add some examples of situations where GDB previously didn't work,
> and now does.

That's a good point.  How about:

  GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
  improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format.  (This
  is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
  Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
  namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
  "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner".  This should greatly reduce the
  frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols.  In
  addition, if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within
  a namespace, GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.

I'm still not entirely thrilled with it, especially that last
sentence; I don't want to go into _too_ many details, but I'm not sure
I've found the right balance.

I'm also trying to think of what else has changed - the patches have
been long enough that I would think I'd be able to point to more
features, but I guess it really is the case that fixing names of types
and teaching GDB about namespaces simply required a lot of
infrastructure changes...

David Carlton
carlton@kealia.com