Re: GDB/XMI (XML Machine Interface)

Eli Zaretskii
2004-08-21T10:25:15Z

> Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 15:59:28 -0400
> From: Bob Rossi <bob@brasko.net>
>
> Changing the MI output to XML would greatly reduce the amount of time
> and code written to interface with GDB. Period. I strongly believe there
> is no argument against this point.

Strangely enough, none of the maintainers of the GDB front ends were
enthusiastic about your proposal. Perhaps that's because they already
have their MI parser written, so the issue of reducing the effort of
writing one does not bother them.

> BTW, how does one go about getting a yes/no answer to such an RFC? Do I
> need the approval of the majority of GDB contributors? maintainers?

If you are looking for approval before you write the code, you've just
heard the relevant opinions. I believe this is all you can hope for.
Whether that is enough for you to sit down and start writing is
something you should decide on your own.

The way to get something into GDB is to write code and then submit it
for approval. Then there are designated individuals (mentioned in
MAINTAINERS) who should review the code and either approve it or point
out the parts that should be rewritten or corrected.

> Also, why haven't some of the maintainers of MI responded at all on this
> subject? Andrew or Elena? Fernando are you the main contact as far as
> decisions on the MI code goes?

I'm neither Andrew nor Elena nor Fernando, but I will try to summarize
the impression I got from this discussion so far: your proposal
mentioned several problems with MI, but most of those problems can
(and IMHO should) be solved without ditching MI, and the effort to
solve those problems with XMI is not going to be smaller. One notable
example of such problems is back compatibility, but there were others.

So, by and large, your proposal seems to be not a silver bullet, but
rather an additional burden on the GDB maintenance, i.e. yet another
interface language and interpreter that can easily run the same risk
of bit rotting as the other interfaces.

I agree that it would be a Good Thing if GDB would come with a
read-to-use MI parser library. If you care about easing the pains of
a GDB front-end programmer, then the project of writing such a parsing
library should sound important to you. But since you said quite
explicitly that you are not interested in such a project, I suspect
that your interest is in playing with XML rather than easing the lives
of front-end programmers out there. There's nothing wrong with your
interest in XML, of course, but you must understand that the interests
of GDB maintainers are elsewhere, and rightly so.