Re: gdbmi.el not working with emacs 22

Nick Roberts
2007-03-01T00:31:36Z

> > > 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?

Yes. MI is under development too, that's why I included gdb-mi.el in GDB
- to keep up with the changes.

> I'm not sure what you
> mean by Emacs 22 changing too much.

Emacs 22 still hasn't officially been released although you may have got
a pretest tarball, or possibly a snapshot packaged for a ditribution such
as Debian.

> Does that mean my emacs is too
> new or too old? Or my gdb is too old or too new for it?

Probably just your gdb as your emacs is much more recent.

>...
> > 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.

OK, well current gdb-mi.el says it's developmental.

> > 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.

Emacs 22 should be released shortly. You can get prebuilt binaries
e.g http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html (I guess by `make his own'
you just mean `build' - this shouldn't be too hard from the CVS repository
at Savannah.

> 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?

Sorry, without a more recent version of gdb you're pretty much on your own.
FSF GDB can do this:

* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.

Maybe that does all you need.

--
Nick http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob