Re: Bob's MI objective

[Andrew Cagney <cagney@gnu.org>]

> On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 06:36:02PM -0400, Andrew Cagney wrote:
> 
>>>> >   * I would like to know what GDB's policy is in regards to supporting old
>>>> >     MI protocols.  ( I have received several opposing views on this )
>>
>>> 
>>> By "supported" you're expecting?  I've stated what people developing GDB 
>>> test, and given you a pretty clear hint as to the consequence.
> 
> 
> Understood, here is what I am hoping for at a minimum. 
> 
>    * GDB supports at least 1 MI protocol for an official release. 
>      Supporting multiple MI protocols would be better for me, but 
>      not a requirement. If GDB could support multiple protocols it 
>      would improve the chances of a given front end working with a
>      given GDB.

But by "support" what do you mean - even a dictionary definition.  GDB 
includes at least one MI implementation, but that says nothing about how 
well it is either implemented or supported.

>    * GDB supports at least 1 MI protocol for a CVS snapshot. The
>      development MI protocol is probably not suitable for front ends
>      to work with, until it has stabilized and become official. So I am
>      hoping that GDB supports the last officially supported MI protocol
>      during it's development process, until the development protocol is
>      ready to become stable.
> 
> 
>>> I was wondering more of what your project and its goals were.
> 
> 
> CGDB is the front end I am working on, that said, I am actually not
> doing all of the development of CGDB, just some of it.
> 
> I am focusing more on libtgdb. This is basically a library that is
> capable of communicating with GDB with any interface that GDB supports.

Why not instead help with libgdb, and the problem of being able to 
directly link in the debugger?

> It already supports annotate 2, now I am adding support for MI2. I would 
> like to make this library support annotate 2, MI2, MI3, ...
> 
> Any front end developer can than take this library, and use it for there
> front end, thus removing the burden of communicating with GDB. In
> essence it is a libgdb that works with any GDB, not just one. The
> library will be light weight, to the point where it can be used for many
> applications, not just front ends ( embedded into tools that need simple
> functionality like backtrace's, ... ).
> 
> I am interested in making this library part of the GDB distro, but
> wouldn't suggest such a thing until it works. I think it would be good
> if GDB distributed not only the MI interface and doco, but a reference
> implementation of dealing with the protocols.
> 
> All of this said, I have a goal of making MI work and make sure that the
> MI output commands actually adhere to the MI output syntax by testing
> this in the testsuite. Probably the next step would be to make sure that
> the MI input syntax follows the same rules. However, I have not made it
> that far.

Andrew