Difficulty for community involvment in gdb

[Erland Lewin <erl@voxi.com>]

Hello,

I've just spent several hours trying to figure out how to build gdb from 
cvs (I'm an experienced developer and I'm still not there yet).
  In the process I've exchanged some E-mail with Frank Eigler (who's 
been very helpful) and Andrew Cagney.
  Basically, the current problem is that there is no accurate 
documentation that I could find to build gdb from the cvs repository. 
The top level Makefile says:

    It is now possible to automatically configure and build a variety of
   tools with one command.  To build all of the tools contained herein,
   run the ``configure'' script here, e.g.:

However, this doesn't work with for instance SID.
  Anyway, I ended up complaining to Frank (because he would listen):

    So to a newcomer to this stuff, it would seem that bdf, sid etc are
    "part of gdb". It's quite difficult to get started with the cvs.
     Additionally, the gnats interface is IMHO not as good as bugzilla.
    The only thing I can do, not being a developer, seems to be to
    create bug reports; I can't add comments to them.
     I think little problems like the ones I'm having inhibit the
    advantage that gdb could get from greater community involvment. What
    I'm really trying to do is to get gdb to work better with threads
    under Linux. This has been a problem for several years (I
    contributed a patch for this about two years ago). I think the time
    it takes for these things to get fixed will be longer if it is more
    difficult for people to get involved.
     End of rant [:-)]


And he replied: "I hear ya. You should repost this set of observations 
to gdb@sources.redhat.com where they can get a wider airing.". So here 
they are.

  Hoping that someone will listen,

    Erland