Re: Questions for GDB Developers

["Salman Khilji" <salmankhilji@hotmail.com>]

I did a little reading on the licensing and yes it does seem that lifting 
the code and creating a proprietory "real-time data monitor" would be 
against the licensing.  However, I do have a few things in my mind and would 
like your opinion on whether it sounds like a good idea:

1)  What I think I could do is lift the symbol handling code and memory 
peeking/poking code and create a "debugger" that does not stop the program 
and allows monitoring of variables in real-time.  The program will only be 
able to read the global variables---no stack variables like a source-line 
debugger.  This part would be released under GPL as open-source.  I will 
implement C and C++.  Others can add whatever they want later on (and of 
course I would like others to help me while I develop this---I don't think I 
can do this on my own!!)

2)  The other GUI parts of the monitoring application including plotting, 
scripting, etc etc would remain proprietory.  Open-source projects like DDD 
could then use the functioality in item 1) to implement real-time monitoring 
features.

This way anyone who wants to create such an application will have the hard 
part already done---that is symbol handling.  This way the core of the 
application will remain open-source and other wil be able to contribute to 
it for future enhancements.

I am sure the real-time community would appreciate this.  So what do you 
think?

Salman


>From: Stan Shebs <shebs@apple.com>
>To: Salman Khilji <salmankhilji@hotmail.com>
>CC: gdb@sources.redhat.com
>Subject: Re: Questions for GDB Developers
>Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 14:41:36 -0800
>
>Salman Khilji wrote:
> >
> > 1) Suppose we have to isolate the symbol dictionary code into a separate
> > library so that this library can potentially be used to create a new
> > debugger.   Which source files do we have to include in this library?  I 
>am
> > talking about the code that reads object/symbol files, determines the
> > addresses and types of global variables and dynamically allocated 
>memory.  I
> > am not interested in stack variables.
>
>In general, we haven't been interested in doing this, because the
>usual rationale has been to violate GDB's licensing terms by making
>proprietary debuggers.  If this is for a new free debugger, then it's
>worth talking further.
>
>Stan



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