Re: Tracepoint support in Cygnus GDB ?

[Michael Elizabeth Chastain <mec@shout.net>]

Eli Zaretskii writes:
eli> In other words, I'd be happier if a larger portion of GDB maintenance
eli> resources were to go into more platform-independent features.

I want to address this issue.

GDB development is not like a project chart where there are resources
and then the manager assigns the resources.  GDB development is more
like an ecosystem, where a bunch of animals come into the environment
and interact with each other.

You can control directly the maintainer resources that you contribute.
If someone is listed as a maintainer you can ask them to perform the
functions of their maintainership (review your patches).  You can nag
people, or inspire people, to do things that you think are important.
But we don't take orders from a centralized leader.

eli> Are you saying that there's no way we could set up practical goals for
eli> GDB development?  I'd be surprised if you actually meant that, but
eli> that's how it sounds.

In my humble view, that's right: there is no way "we" can set up
practical goals for GDB development.  I can set up goals for my
contributions, and I do.  For instance, my goals include:

  run the test suite regularly
  publish exhaustive analyses on the differences
  complain about gdb regressions from week to week
  file a PR for each gdb regression from the previous public release
  make the responsible developers aware of those PR's
  file a PR for each gcc regression in gcc debug info
    # I think I'm actually the primary guy who tests gcc debug info!
  respond to user questions on gdb@ and bug-gdb@
  respond to user bug reports in gnats
  maintain testsuite/gdb.cp
  contribute to the overall testsuite
  write doco that i think the users need

I self-generated these goals.  I'm open to input on them, but basically,
you would have a hard time convincing me to change my overall philosophy
from my vision (QA) to your vision (user-level features).  I suspect
the same is true for most gdb contributors.

Michael C