Re: Move GDB to C++ ?

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 04:46:25PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> The idea is that a maintainer cannot behave with the code as he
> pleases, claiming that it's his time and therefore his, and only his,
> business.

So this is an objection to the refactoring, not to how Vladimir spends
his time working on GDB.  That's fine; I was just reacting to my
interpretation of your statement.  Thanks!

Please note that this is also what Vladimir was trying to say.
Objecting to the results of refactoring is different from objecting to
him working on the refactoring.

I've seen several kind of objections:

- The effort of conversion would not be worthwhile.  I believe that
these objections are, in this circumstance, not significant; the
people who believe the effort of refactoring is not worthwhile are
certainly not obliged to help.

- The conversion is a bad idea because of inherent problems of C++.
I haven't seen much to convince me of this.

- The conversion is a bad idea because of the dependency on C++.  This
is an interesting issue and I plan to discuss it, but not in this
message.

One objection I have not seen:

- The result of the refactoring would be harder to solve problems in.
This, especially with concrete examples, would be a compelling
objection.

> The idea is also that GDB is a collective effort, so arguments saying
> "I will do this because I like it, and you shouldn't care" are not
> something I'm willing to accept.

To see one reason why tempers are flaring in this conversation, please
compare that paragraph to this one:

GDB is a collective effort, so arguments saying "you will not do this
because I don't like it" are not something I'm willing to accept.

> > And I think one of the bit structural issues in GDB is that it's hard
> > for even active volunteers to take it to new places.  I want to make
> > that easier.
> 
> So do I, but what new places are we talking about?  Until now, I fail
> to see even a single direction in which someone would like to go,
> while the fact that GDB is written in C makes that hard.

A number of examples have been presented in this thread.  I find them
convincing; you don't.  I'm not sure what I can add to that.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery