Re: [RFC] [gdb/tui] Add set tui border-kind acs-or-space/acs-or-ascii

[Tom de Vries <tdevries@suse.de>]

On 12/15/23 20:43, Tom Tromey wrote:
>>>>>> "Tom" == Tom de Vries via Gdb-patches <gdb-patches@sourceware.org> writes:
> 
> I don't recall if we discussed or finished discussing this...
> 
> Tom> The gdb TUI testsuite uses a custom ansi terminal emulator (tuiterm.exp) in
> Tom> order to be able to inspect the state of the terminal, and consequently runs
> Tom> all test-cases using TERM=ansi.
> 
> Tom> Once in a while I manually replay a test-case on an actual terminal emulator,
> Tom> using TERM=ansi to make sure I trigger the same behaviour, and run into funny
> Tom> looking borders, like this:
> Tom> ...
> Tom> ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿
> Tom> ³                             ³
> Tom> ³ [ No Source Available ]     ³
> Tom> ³                             ³
> Tom> ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ
> Tom> ...
> Tom> This is PR tui/30370.
> 
> IIUC, you are not using an actual ANSI terminal, but some other thing,
> and then setting TERM=ansi?
> 

Yes (and some other thing meaning xterm, gnome-terminal or konsole).

> I think in this case you should just expect that things will go wrong.
> TERM has to reflect the capabilities of the actual terminal.  I tend to
> think gdb shouldn't try to work around this kind of thing, if a user
> does this it will probably affect any terminal-aware program.

Agreed.

FWIW, my meta concern here was difference in behaviour between 
test-cases run in the testsuite, and replaying those scenarios in an xterm.

I think this concern is better addressed by the ansi-for-tui proposal (
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/gdb-patches/2023-May/199761.html ).

Thanks,
- Tom