Re: Bob's MI objective

[Bob Rossi <bob@brasko.net>]

On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 04:12:32PM -0400, Andrew Cagney wrote:
> Bob, what's your overall objective here?  Perhaphs our lack of 
> appreciation of your overriding goals is the reason that some (at least 
> I) are feeling somewhat puzzled and confused.

I want an MI version named after myself, specifically 'gdb -i=bobmi'
No seriously,

I already have a front end that works off of GDB's annotate two feature.
I understand that the annotate two interface could be removed from GDB. 
I asked you a year or two ago to wait until MI is capable of replacing the
annotations. I personally wrote the two commands to MI
-file-list-exec-source-file
-file-list-exec-source-files
that make MI capable of replacing the annotations interface for front
ends that do not already know what files are involved in the users
applications. I appreciate your patience in this matter. I feel that I
have done my part in this matter to prove to you that I am interested
and involved with the MI interface evolving for small front ends. 

Now I am beginning to add the MI interface to my front end. I spent the
last few weeks looking at the grammar of the currently documented MI
output syntax. The documentation is incorrect, but mostly correct and I 
suggested some changes to it so that others could benefit.
I have come up with the rules and generated a parser that is capable of
parsing an MI output command. I would like to validate the output of
GDB's MI commands in the testsuite to prove to us all that every MI command 
obeys the protocol. This is something I am interested in doing for the 
benefit of all front end developers. Not just myself.

Now, my next objective is to figure these things,

   * I would like to know what GDB's policy is in regards to supporting old
     MI protocols.  ( I have received several opposing views on this )

   * I would like to ensure that my front end works well with snapshots
     of GDB. I do not want to work with the MI development protocol, I
     just want to work with the last officially supported protocol.

   * I would like to make sure that development protocols are never used
     by my front end and that I can figure out all of the officially 
     supported MI protocols that a given GDB supports.

By being able to understand the highest officially supported protocol
that both GDB and my front end understand is critical to me. I think it is 
safe to say that a front end needs to know the MI protocols that a given 
GDB supports. The way we get that info from GDB to the front end is the 
question in debate.

Thanks,
Bob Rossi