From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30819 invoked by alias); 21 Jun 2004 07:06:01 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 30793 invoked from network); 21 Jun 2004 07:05:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mx1.redhat.com) (66.187.233.31) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 21 Jun 2004 07:05:59 -0000 Received: from int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (int-mx1.corp.redhat.com [172.16.52.254]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i5L75xe1014865 for ; Mon, 21 Jun 2004 03:05:59 -0400 Received: from zenia.home.redhat.com (porkchop.devel.redhat.com [172.16.58.2]) by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id i5L75v030634; Mon, 21 Jun 2004 03:05:57 -0400 To: Andrew Cagney Cc: gdb@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: Post GDB 6.2, require new frame code References: <40D34274.50803@gnu.org> From: Jim Blandy Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 07:06:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: <40D34274.50803@gnu.org> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-SW-Source: 2004-06/txt/msg00203.txt.bz2 Andrew Cagney writes: > GDB's new frame infrastructure was introduced more than a year ago > (dwarf2-frame added May '03) and then included in the 6.0 and 6.1 > releases. Since that introduction, we've seen: > > alpha ARM AVR CRIS d10v FRV > PA-RISC i386 ia64 m32r m68hcll > m68k m88k mips ppc s390 sh4 > sparc vax > > all updated to this new framework. Unfortunately, though, we're still > left with a few architectures relying on the old framework. For concreteness, it looks like those would be: h8300 mcore mn10300 ns32k sh64 v850 xstormy16 Supporting the old frame interfaces is a burden, and one that there's no good reason to carry forever. But listing things as obsolete in NEWS isn't a very high-profile step; I think many, many users don't read NEWS. For example, remember that old discussion about obsoleting annotate level 2? If the intent is to provide some warning, I think it work better to add something a user would actually see. For example, if GDB is configured for an obsolete architecture, it could print a one-line message at startup, after the copyright notice, saying "Support for the Intel 4004 will be removed after GDB 6.2; see NEWS." The NEWS entry would clarify, saying that it was obsolete only due to a lack of sustaining maintenance, and that if anyone contributed modernized code, we'd be happy to continue support for that architecture. What I'm suggesting is that the intermediate phase between "fully supported" and "removed" be marked with a visible behavior change in GDB that users will be likely to notice, without reading NEWS or any other documentation.