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Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2023 20:58:23 +0300
Message-Id: <83ledsfm4g.fsf@gnu.org>
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
To: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>
Cc: pedro@palves.net, gdb-patches@sourceware.org
In-Reply-To: <87sf802zhi.fsf@tromey.com> (message from Tom Tromey on Wed, 30
	Aug 2023 11:48:09 -0600)
Subject: Re: [RFC] Deprecate stabs
References: <20230119174156.654402-1-tom@tromey.com>
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> From: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>
> Cc: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>,  gdb-patches@sourceware.org
> Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2023 11:48:09 -0600
> 
> Pedro> My position with stabs for years had been that, as long as GCC needs it for some ports,
> Pedro> we should keep it.  Since GCC has since removed support for stabs, I think we're now
> Pedro> free to remove it too.
> 
> Pedro> I think we should mark stabs deprecated for GDB 14.  We can discuss more when to actually
> Pedro> remove it, but IMO, the sooner we mark it deprecated, the sooner people will be aware of our
> Pedro> intentions.  FWIW, I do support removing it in GDB 15.
> 
> It's maybe a little late for 14/15 now.
> 
> I'm thinking I will send email to gdb@ and push the NEWS patch after the
> 14 branch is made.  That is, deprecate in 15 and remove in 16.
> 
> I have also been wondering if some of the other debug formats are still
> relevant.  My suspicion is that they are long since obsolete.

Not obsolete, broken.  They simply don't work, and for quite some
time.  The few platforms which still need them cannot use the newer
GDB versions.

For example, the DJGPP (a.k.a. "go32") port of Emacs still uses the
COFF debug info, and the latest GDB version that can be used to debug
it is GDB 7.2.  Any newer version simply cannot debug the program, and
either crashes or fails to start the debuggee and take control when
breakpoints are hit.