Re: [discuss] Support for reverse-execution

Daniel Jacobowitz
2005-05-20T18:14:25Z

On Fri, May 20, 2005 at 06:54:13PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Vladimir Prus <ghost@cs.msu.su>
> > Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 18:45:22 +0400
> >
> > Would not it be better to have a single "reverse" command which puts the
> > debugger in "reverse" mode -- making step/stepi/next/nexti go backward.
>
> Daniel, I rest my case ;-)

I don't rest mine :-) I admit I was a little surprised to see someone
else suggest it, but I still think it's an awful idea as a user
interface. While the "gear" switch is clever, a GUI might still want
to use different icons for "next" and "rnext". And whichever way the
GDB CLI and MI interfaces expose this functionality, a GUI can just as
easily reuse the same buttons for both.

The only advantage I see would be letting a GUI support it without
having to know that the feature exists, by passing a command to GDB and
then using the existing buttons. Seems of dubious use.

I don't know yet whether direction during a debugging session is going
to be persistant or frequently changing. Only one way to find out...

--
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC