Re: Deprecate dwarf and mdebug support, delete nlm?

Eli Zaretskii
2003-05-10T09:25:29Z

> Date: Fri, 09 May 2003 12:48:51 -0400
> From: Andrew Cagney <ac131313@redhat.com>
>
> > mec> Are there still a lot of SCO users with gcc 2?
> > kj> HUGE numbers. It's the currently "officially supported" version
> > kj> that we give our customers. Until 3.3 we haven't really felt GCC
> > kj> 3 was ready for primetime. In fact the next "oficially supported"
> > kj> version will be 3.4.
>
> > Okay, that means we have to keep dwarf 1 for another 6-12 months
> > at least. Rats.
>
> I don't know ....

My vote is to retain DWARF 1 until SCO switches to GCC 3.x as their
official version. I think otherwise we would be unfairly punishing
SCO users. I agree with Kean that a solid compiler is much more
important that a debugger, so most users will not upgrade GCC just
because GDB wants them to. OTOH, those SCO users who do use GDB
should be able to benefit from the new GDB features.

> Yes. There is no such thing as free beer. Someone, eventually, ends up
> paying for it.

Let's ask the SCO developers to pay at least part of that price. In
fact, Kean already volunteered, so that issue appears to be taken care
of.

> This has come up before. The GDB 4 to 5 transition occured due to a
> switch to ISO C. People with a K&R compiler needing to either download
> GCC, or GDB 4.x.

That's a totally different beer ;-) The compiler used to build GDB is
not teh same as the compiler used to build production software. One
could install a newer GCC, compile GDB, and then use the older GCC for
development. Or one could download binary packages of GDB someone
else built. It's much easier to solve this kind of problems than the
one SCO users will face if we drop DWARF 1 now.