Re: Phasing out Dwarf 1?

[Stan Shebs <shebs@apple.com>]

Kean Johnston wrote:

>> This seems like a poor argument. The availibility and suitability of
>> modern GCC for building GDB does not imply that modern GCC will be
>> suitable for building the application to be debugged.
>
>
> I agree. I think phasing out a whole debugging format
> is ill-advised. Most people dont want to keep around
> multiple versions of a tool. If I need to debug an
> old binary becuase the libc I replaced today is breaking
> something, I think I have a reasonable expectation of
> being able to do so. I think it is quite appropriate to
> phase out the *generation* of said format, but not its
> interpretation in a debugger.
>
> Kean
>
But how is it going to get tested? Experience shows that untested parts
of GDB bitrot pretty quickly, and without any volunteers to let us know
when things break and/or fix them when they do, the claim of support
is just misleading to users. There are many previous releases of GDB
that do include Dwarf 1 support, and they build/run fine on a wide
variety of hosts, so it's not like Dwarf 1 users are being left
debugger-less.

Now if you're going to volunteer to set up a Dwarf 1 testing
regimen with an old GCC and current GDB, and report on it
regularly, I think that could justify keeping it. But miss
a week, and poof! :-)

Stan