Re: Help using the GDB C++ STL pretty-printers / xmethods

[Paul Smith <paul@mad-scientist.net>]

On Sun, 2022-05-08 at 09:16 +0100, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> > > xmethods don't help me (IIUC) because I'm in the middle of some
> > > Python function and the value I want to retrieve is in a Python
> > > variable, not in a GDB variable, so I can't easily access it with
> > > parse_and_eval().
> > 
> > gdb.set_convenience_variable('mgr', val['mgr'])
> > init = gdb.parse_and_eval('$mgr->initialized')
> > 
> > This will use the xmethod to evaluate the expression.
> 
> And then:
> 
> if init:
>     return gdb.parse_and_eval('*$mgr')

Yes... this is why I qualified my statement with "easily" :).

Also if I'm doing this as I search through a 700,000 element container,
which is already not super-speedy, the performance is likely not going
to be great.

I imagine the cleanest solution is to have a Python API for STL that
works with and returns gdb.Values, then have the pretty-printers call
that API and format the result.  Then others can use that API as well.

I get that the current suite of Python functions are geared
specifically towards using STL objects directly from the GDB UI: both
pretty-printing and accessing them.  As someone who's writing my own
Python functions for a complex C++ program, however, an API as above
would be more helpful; we have lots of methods that grovel through
complex structures looking for specific elements, etc.

And, I understand the answer "patches welcome" :).  I'm just putting
this out there for people to consider.