Re: GDB Annotations : support plan

[Bob Rossi <bob_rossi@cox.net>]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 12:40:10PM +1300, Nick Roberts wrote:
> Jain, Rohit writes:
>  > Hi,
>  > 
>  > GDB is now supporting GDB/MI interface, and the annotation mechanism has
>  > now become obsolete.
>  > 
>  > Is there any plan to completely discontinue the support for annotations
>  > in future?
> 
> Yes.

Agreed.

>  > If yes, and if you know approximate release period that annotations are
>  > going to exist, please let me know.
> 
> AFAIK here is no timescale.

Hopefully not to soon. I still use them in my front end, but will
hopefully in 2008 switch to MI.

>  > If no, then is it safe to assume that GDB/MI interface and annotations
>  > (although obsolete!) are going to co-exist?
> 
> Building frontends that use annotations is actively discouraged.  If
> GDB/MI does not currently meet all your requirements then please contribute
> to its development.

I have to say, it would be a really bad idea to use the annotations.
Really bad. It's hard to do much of anything with what they provide.

However, GDB/MI will waste a lot of your time if your requirements
aren't meet through what it provides already. I'm just warning you.

Someone in the GDB development area basically decided to create GDB/MI 
as a nice protocol for GDB front ends. However, they didn't write a 
client to demostrate it's purposes. Each client reimplements all the 
work necessary to parse and interpret the protocol. Furthermore, every 
client wants something different and so has different expectations of 
what the interface should provide. Finally, if it doesn't do something 
you need, the standard answer is - do it yourself. Just for the icing 
on the cake, don't expect your patch to get reviewed for 6 months.

This is my experience. I have a bison parser that parses the GDB/MI
protocol, however, it only works with a bison version in CVS. Contact
me if you care.

Bob Rossi