Re: gdbmi.el not working with emacs 22

Bill Baxter
2007-03-01T00:01:03Z

Thanks for the speedy reply, Nick.
Responses inline below:

On 3/1/07, Nick Roberts <nickrob@snap.net.nz> wrote:

> I'm glad to hear that this works with MinGW.
>
> > However M-x gdbmi with the default command-line did not work
> > properly. It is able to debug, but the decorations don't show up in
> > the margin.
>
> Emacs 22 has probably changed too much in CVS in that time. It *should* work
> with latest GDB (6.6) but I don't know if MinGW has such a build.

No 6.2.3 is the latest snapshot. So you suspect 6.2.3's MI output is
to old to work with the current emacs code? I'm not sure what you
mean by Emacs 22 changing too much. Does that mean my emacs is too
new or too old? Or my gdb is too old or too new for it?

I'd like to try to help get it working by tinkering on the elisp side,
but some hints about what to look for would be nice.

> > Is this a bug, or a known issue, or what?
> > Should I file a bug report?
>
> Please don't file a bug report. It does says in the file that it's under
> development, but perhaps it should carry a stronger health warning.

It says this:
;; This mode acts as a graphical user interface to GDB and works with Emacs
;; 22.x and the version of GDB with which it is distributed.

Which sounds like it pretty definitively does work, as in has been
successfully tested with Emacs 22. So maybe that should be worded
with a little more uncertainty.

> If you
> want an easy life then use the mode in Emacs 22. If you want to help develop
> gdb-mi.el then, welcome!, but you will need the latest GDB and to post your
> findings here. The plan was/is to keep it synchronised with GDB once Emacs is
> released.

What I really want to do is use the D debugger
(http://ddbg.mainia.de/releases.html) which emulates GDB. The author
is planning to support GDB/MI output, but I can't help him get ddbg
working in emacs until I can at least get GDB itself working in emacs.
There's no point in him trying to emulate --annotate=3 output
starting from now just to make emacs happy. GDB/MI is clearly the
future and --annotate is the past. Eclipse already supports it for
example and other debuggers will or will soon also. So if you're
emulating gdb for debuggers to use, emulating GDB/MI seems the way to
go.

The problem with waiting for the next emacs release is that Win32
versions pretty much *aren't* released. Ever. FSF is providing emacs
21.3 from March 2004 as the "latest" version on their web site. The
version of Emacs 22 I've got is from some individual who was fed up
with that and decided to make his own.

So any hints about where I should focus my debugging efforts to figure
out how to make gdb 6.2.3 + gdb-mi.el + emacs 22.0.93.1 work together
nicely?

--bb