From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 25107 invoked by alias); 13 Feb 2015 15:51:34 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 25076 invoked by uid 89); 13 Feb 2015 15:51:34 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Virus-Found: No X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=1.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM,KAM_FROM_URIBL_PCCC,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW,SPF_PASS autolearn=no version=3.3.2 X-HELO: mail-la0-f49.google.com Received: from mail-la0-f49.google.com (HELO mail-la0-f49.google.com) (209.85.215.49) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with (AES128-GCM-SHA256 encrypted) ESMTPS; Fri, 13 Feb 2015 15:51:33 +0000 Received: by labge10 with SMTP id ge10so17077059lab.12 for ; Fri, 13 Feb 2015 07:51:29 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.152.10.98 with SMTP id h2mr2027421lab.18.1423842689716; Fri, 13 Feb 2015 07:51:29 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.112.128.163 with HTTP; Fri, 13 Feb 2015 07:51:29 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <54DDEF90.4090209@redhat.com> References: <20150213110919.GN5709@adacore.com> <54DDEF90.4090209@redhat.com> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2015 15:51:00 -0000 Message-ID: Subject: Re: fwd: is LLDB a threat to GDB's success? #999 From: Shahbaz Youssefi To: gdb@sourceware.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-IsSubscribed: yes X-SW-Source: 2015-02/txt/msg00024.txt.bz2 If you don't mind some random guy chipping in: First off, I hadn't heard of lldb until just now, but I'm actually happy about it. Without competition, improvement is slow. That said, I would like to ask the gdb developers to please not be arrogant like developers of some other GNU software are. It is easy to become this way when your tool is ubiquitous, and that's also why people would stop using it as soon as a decent alternative surfaces. I am sure you have seen this in ways much deeper than me, but here are at least some basic examples from a user's point of view. automake maintainers didn't want to introduce silent rules, but when people loved Linux's make system, they added it. gcc maintainers didn't want to add color support to output until llvm came, did that and people loved it. You can see more influences from llvm on gcc as well which I'm sure at some point in the past had been suggested to the maintainers and had fallen to deaf ears. So if you do care about gdb's survival, please pay attention to what users of gdb want or what they complain about. While gdb was the only debugging tool, you could just tell them off, have them suffer and what not because that's how you thought gdb should work. If lldb addresses those usability problems, you can't then ask people not to switch. On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 1:35 PM, Pedro Alves wrote: > I should perhaps add that the opinion expressed was mine alone > and does not represent the opinions of my past, present, and > future employer(s). :-) > > Pedro alves wrote: > >>> - Good C++ support. >>> >>> This stems from modularity. lldb reuses llvm/clang (the C/C++ compiler >>> frontend) for expression evaluation/parsing, thus it has excellent >>> C++ support. GDB has its own built in C++ expression parser, which >>> is poor. GNU of course already has excellent parsers inside GCC/G++, >>> but unfortunately, for years GCC did not really welcome modularity >>> and reuse, and that now bites back, hard. As the C++ world shifts >>> more and more to C++11/C++14, the more GDB is bitten by this, >>> as it doesn't understand basic new features that have been added >>> to the language. LLDB gains support for such new features for >>> free whenever clang gains support for the same. > > This of course was missing lots of context, but, I'll add that > GDB's not actually sitting and waiting here. There's a project > going on already that is exactly about reusing GCC/G++ in GDB. > > The first step has landed in GDB 7.9 already, in the form of > the "compile" command, which compiles, injects, and executes > a C expression, making use of GCC through a plugin. See: > > https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Compiling-and-Injecting-Code.html > > We're discussing next steps for the project here: > > https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb/2015-02/msg00019.html > > Everyone's more than welcome to join! > > Thanks, > Pedro Alves >