Re: gdb.ini vs. .gdbinit on Cygwin

["Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@is.elta.co.il>]

> Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 13:06:38 -0500
> From: Fernando Nasser <fnasser@redhat.com>
> 
> > As a resort we could
> > begin to support an environment variable GDBINIT or similar which
> > contains the name/path of the GDB init file.  That would have the
> > advantage to be mostly host independent.
> > 
> 
> That would have to go through a public gdb discussion as it would 
> affect other platforms as well.
> 
> And what we need is to accommodate users with an older setup and 
> give them an incentive to switch.  The warning message (if no
> .gdbinit was fond and a gdb.ini was found instead) accomplishes
> both goals.
> 
> Eli, what do you think of that solution?  

I generally don't like environment variables unless they are
absolutely necessary.  This doesn't seem to be the case.  Other
platforms don't need it.  Users will have to set the variable in
order to get the functionality.

It's simply a back compatibility issue, that's all.  I like your
suggestion, to support both the old and the new names, best.  It
seems to be silently doing the Right Thing, which is what I expect
from good solutions: you shouldn't be aware that there was a problem
to begin with ;-)

But I don't want to make this an issue between myself and the Cygwin
maintainers.  I just made a comment in the hope that it will be
useful; if the Cygwin maintainers have strong feelings about tossing
gdb.ini and never looking back, it's between them and the Cygwin
users.  Just be sure to document the change in the manual.