Re: Windows support in GDB

Christopher Faylor
2005-04-29T19:36:28Z

On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 03:07:55PM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
>On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 02:59:56PM -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>>On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 01:57:45PM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
>>>On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 01:16:31PM -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>>>>It seems like my point wasn't clear here. I know that cygwin is slow.
>>>>
>>>>I'm talking about just using gdb for debugging. If your customers are
>>>>routinely rebuilding gdb, then the slowness would be an issue. If they
>>>>are not, then unless cygwin was adding some kind of 10x slowdown to
>>>>debugging, I don't see why it would be an issue.
>>>
>>>OK, I see your point. I think we're talking past each other, though -
>>>this comes back to Kris's point about consistency. Shipping a mingw
>>>GCC and a cygwin GDB is error-prone, especially if we otherwise do not
>>>need the cygwin DLL.
>>
>>I don't see why this is an issue. It would take a little bit of work
>>to make sure you didn't stomp on an existing cygwin installation but
>>putting a cygwin1.dll in the same directory as gdb.exe is a pretty
>>time-tested way of releasing packages on Windows. Many packages
>>release executables + dlls.
>>
>>Cygwin is problematic because it is constantly evolving and adding new
>>features and, so, there will be issues if you try to use an old DLL
>>with a newer binary but, again, this is not an insurmountable problem.
>
>I'm afraid I don't know any more about it than I've already said. I
>don't have a lot of experience with Cygwin. One problem I seem to
>recall is that you can't put the new binary in your $PATH and use it
>from Cygwin without removing the second copy of the DLL.

Yes. You're right. There are issues there. You'd need to add some
intelligence into an installer to guard against the dreaded multiple
DLL problem.

However, I guess what I'm winnowing out here is that there may be some
decisions that are partly based on (and I really don't use this term as
a pejorative) ignorance of the way things work rather than a need for a
windows port.

That does not mean that a windows port is not desirable or useful or
wonderful so I'll shut up now. It's just an academic point and
obviously people can spend their time however they want. If anyone
wants to talk about cygwin DLL issues they are welcome to send me
personal email or to use the cygwin list.

cgf