Re: Windows support in GDB

Christopher Faylor
2005-04-29T16:32:16Z

On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 09:14:34AM -0700, Mark Mitchell wrote:
>Christopher Faylor wrote:
>>While I am the Windows maintainer for gdb, I have been thinking that
>>maybe I might have to step down if it means that I'll have to support a
>>Windows configuration for which I have little interest.
>
>I think that would be a shame.
>
>>I haven't asked what the problem is with just using cygwin with gdb. I
>>suspect that the standard two problems are:
>
>You might ask the MinGW community why they exist. :-)

I'm a member of the MinGW community and admirer of MinGW but,
unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily translate into my wanting to
support gdb-on-windows-sans-cygwin.

So far, I've had no problems with the patches being applied. I've
been asking people in the MinGW community to submit patches for
a long time.

However, now that the patches are finally here, I have to say that I
sort of share Mark K's concerns. I'm wondering if we are on a slippery
slope and (to mix a metaphor) will be subjecting gdb to a
death-by-inches as we slowly add ifdefs throughout the configury and
code.

>One reason to use MinGW is that you're using other tools that rely on
>Windows paths, and don't understand Cygwin mount points. Or you
>yourself don't understand Cygwin mount points. :-)

You don't have to use windows mount points if you don't want to. AFAIK,
normal windows paths have been working in gdb for a while. I'm not talking
about requiring a complete cygwin environment to run gdb. In theory,
all that you really need is "gdb.exe + cygwin1.dll".

But, as you said, this discussion probably isn't worthwhile. Customers
want what they want.

cgf