Re: [Fwd: Is anyone using the HP compilers on PA-RISC with FSF GDB?] (fwd)

["John David Anglin" <dave@hiauly1.hia.nrc.ca>]

I've forwarded comments that I made in response to Daniel's message to
Randolph.

Forwarded message:
> From dave Wed Aug 2 11:45:40 EDT 2006
> Subject: Re: [Fwd: Is anyone using the HP compilers on PA-RISC with FSF GDB?]
> To: randolph@tausq.org (Randolph Chung)
> Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 11:45:40 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "John David Anglin" <dave@hiauly1>
> In-Reply-To: <44D019E7.2040405@tausq.org> from "Randolph Chung" at Aug 2, 2006 11:20:07 am
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> 
> > I have a question, though, which I think I've asked before.  GCC on
> > HP/UX uses stabs, so only requires basic SOM support from GDB.  That
> 
> There have been requests for ELF debug support.  The main issue as
> far as I can see is the lack of named sections and where to put stuff.
> 
> > should be in decent shape still.  But the stuff read by hpread.c is
> > only generated by the HP compilers (cc and aCC).
> > 
> > - Are these compilers still important for C?
> > - Are these compilers still important for C++?
> 
> Oh, I'm sure these compilers are still important to some people.
> However, I don't see the need to maintain support for the debug
> format generated by these compilers.  There's no debug info in any
> of the system libraries, so this capability doesn't help development
> of open source applications under HP-UX.
> 
> I should also say that access to HP compilers is necessary to
> maintain this code.  Thus, it really can only be done by HP.  If
> they don't maintain it, then it should be removed.
> 
> > I have not heard from any users of the FSF GDB with the HP compilers in
> > a long time; for HP-specific features, I suspect more people use HP's
> > WDB fork of GDB.  If no one is using the HP support, I would like to
> > remove it from the next release of GDB.
> 
> The HP compilers are quite stable, so I think WDB should be adequate.
> HP can always update WDB if necessary.  I don't think it's likely that
> HP will change their compilers on PA-RISC to provide ISO compliance.
> It would require significant changes to the runtime.

I.e., the current HP C and aCC compilers are in a holding pattern except
for bug fixes.

> On the otherhand, GCC C, C++, Ada and Java are now working quite well
> on PA-RISC for both Linux and HP-UX.  So, I would suggest that we need
> to focus support in these areas.  Of course, I'm a bit biased ;)

Dave
-- 
J. David Anglin                                  dave.anglin@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
National Research Council of Canada              (613) 990-0752 (FAX: 952-6602)