Re: [binutils-gdb] Style the gdb welcome message

Re: [binutils-gdb] Style the gdb welcome message

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

Hi Tom,

On Fri, 28 Dec 2018, Tom Tromey wrote:

> https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=binutils-gdb.git;h=d47032b7ca85852acb1d2bc645f477ffee4373fc
> 
> commit d47032b7ca85852acb1d2bc645f477ffee4373fc
> Author: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>
> Date:   Thu Sep 6 14:44:17 2018 -0600
> 
>     Style the gdb welcome message
>     
>     This changes gdb to style the welcome message that is shown by
>     default.  The styling is only done interactively.

 I missed that in the various distractions that kept me from using an 
up-to-date version of GDB, but now that I came across it the hard way the 
bright pink version line hurts my eyes and disturbs me.  Setting:

set style enabled off

in ~/.gdbinit does not make any change to it, so I find it a functional 
regression.  I'm sure there were important reasons to make this change, 
but can we please get it under user control somehow?

  Maciej

Re: [binutils-gdb] Style the gdb welcome message

[Tom Tromey]

Maciej>  I missed that in the various distractions that kept me from using an 
Maciej> up-to-date version of GDB, but now that I came across it the hard way the 
Maciej> bright pink version line hurts my eyes and disturbs me.  Setting:
Maciej> set style enabled off
Maciej> in ~/.gdbinit does not make any change to it, so I find it a functional 
Maciej> regression.  I'm sure there were important reasons to make this change, 
Maciej> but can we please get it under user control somehow?

I added this to make it clear to users that gdb is style-enabled now.
I guess I don't care much about this particular instance though.  Maybe
removing it is the answer.

I'm curious to hear what others think.  In the absence of comments I'll
remove it sometime before 9.1, I think.  Or I'll approve a patch to do so.

thanks,
Tom

Re: [binutils-gdb] Style the gdb welcome message

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>
> Cc: Tom Tromey <tromey@sourceware.org>,  gdb-patches@sourceware.org
> Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 16:45:54 -0600
> 
> I'm curious to hear what others think.

I like it, FWIW.

Re: [binutils-gdb] Style the gdb welcome message

[Andrew Burgess]

* Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com> [2019-10-14 16:45:54 -0600]:

> Maciej>  I missed that in the various distractions that kept me from using an 
> Maciej> up-to-date version of GDB, but now that I came across it the hard way the 
> Maciej> bright pink version line hurts my eyes and disturbs me.  Setting:
> Maciej> set style enabled off
> Maciej> in ~/.gdbinit does not make any change to it, so I find it a functional 
> Maciej> regression.  I'm sure there were important reasons to make this change, 
> Maciej> but can we please get it under user control somehow?
> 
> I added this to make it clear to users that gdb is style-enabled now.
> I guess I don't care much about this particular instance though.  Maybe
> removing it is the answer.
> 
> I'm curious to hear what others think.  In the absence of comments I'll
> remove it sometime before 9.1, I think.  Or I'll approve a patch to
> do so.

FWIW I hadn't even noticed the use of colour there, so it certainly
doesn't bother me.  On my machine with both a light background and a
dark background I don't see a bright pink, but a darker pink.

I guess there's no simple way that we could postpone printing the
welcome message until some later point, say, just before GDB tries to
print anything else?

What this might mean is that if ~/.gdbinit contains only (or starts
with) commands that produce no output, for example 'set style enabled
off' then these would be processed before GDB printed the welcome
message.

I've not looked at the code at all, so have no idea how hard this
would be to actually do...

Thanks,
Andrew

Re: [binutils-gdb] Style the gdb welcome message

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Tue, 15 Oct 2019, Andrew Burgess wrote:

> > I'm curious to hear what others think.  In the absence of comments I'll
> > remove it sometime before 9.1, I think.  Or I'll approve a patch to
> > do so.
> 
> What this might mean is that if ~/.gdbinit contains only (or starts
> with) commands that produce no output, for example 'set style enabled
> off' then these would be processed before GDB printed the welcome
> message.

 Thank you all who responded for your input.

 As this is a matter of a human interface I realise that personal 
perception will be very different among various people, from positive, 
through neutral to disturbing.  The classic single-colour interface is 
uniform and does not, in my personal experience, cause any disturbance 
or distraction to me.  Other people may appreciate the highlighting.

 I think a way to move forward might be to borrow from other GNU 
projects, such as GCC and coreutils, and have an environment variable 
defined called GDB_COLORS, analogously to GCC_COLORS or LS_COLORS, and 
make GDB interpret it ahead of its usual initialisation files (which 
could optionally override the environment settings).

 Thoughts?

  Maciej