From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 21630 invoked by alias); 21 Aug 2004 10:25:15 -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 21607 invoked from network); 21 Aug 2004 10:25:13 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO legolas.inter.net.il) (192.114.186.24) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 21 Aug 2004 10:25:13 -0000 Received: from zaretski ([80.230.144.169]) by legolas.inter.net.il (MOS 3.4.6-GR) with ESMTP id CIE34605 (AUTH halo1); Sat, 21 Aug 2004 13:25:08 +0300 (IDT) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 10:25:00 -0000 From: "Eli Zaretskii" To: Bob Rossi Message-ID: <01c48768$Blat.v2.2.2$a38a12a0@zahav.net.il> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 CC: gdb@sources.redhat.com, cagney@redhat.com, ezannoni@redhat.com, fnasser@redhat.com In-reply-to: <20040820195928.GA6372@white> (message from Bob Rossi on Fri, 20 Aug 2004 15:59:28 -0400) Subject: Re: GDB/XMI (XML Machine Interface) Reply-to: Eli Zaretskii References: <20040810201440.GA24186@white> <20040819234921.GA4966@white> <20040820103420.340A64D400C@stray.canids> <20040820125443.GB5703@white> <20040820183447.GA21565@nevyn.them.org> <20040820184900.GA5806@white> <20040820185159.GA22481@nevyn.them.org> <20040820192458.GB5806@white> <20040820194224.GA24407@nevyn.them.org> <20040820195928.GA6372@white> X-SW-Source: 2004-08/txt/msg00267.txt.bz2 > Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 15:59:28 -0400 > From: Bob Rossi > > Changing the MI output to XML would greatly reduce the amount of time > and code written to interface with GDB. Period. I strongly believe there > is no argument against this point. Strangely enough, none of the maintainers of the GDB front ends were enthusiastic about your proposal. Perhaps that's because they already have their MI parser written, so the issue of reducing the effort of writing one does not bother them. > BTW, how does one go about getting a yes/no answer to such an RFC? Do I > need the approval of the majority of GDB contributors? maintainers? If you are looking for approval before you write the code, you've just heard the relevant opinions. I believe this is all you can hope for. Whether that is enough for you to sit down and start writing is something you should decide on your own. The way to get something into GDB is to write code and then submit it for approval. Then there are designated individuals (mentioned in MAINTAINERS) who should review the code and either approve it or point out the parts that should be rewritten or corrected. > Also, why haven't some of the maintainers of MI responded at all on this > subject? Andrew or Elena? Fernando are you the main contact as far as > decisions on the MI code goes? I'm neither Andrew nor Elena nor Fernando, but I will try to summarize the impression I got from this discussion so far: your proposal mentioned several problems with MI, but most of those problems can (and IMHO should) be solved without ditching MI, and the effort to solve those problems with XMI is not going to be smaller. One notable example of such problems is back compatibility, but there were others. So, by and large, your proposal seems to be not a silver bullet, but rather an additional burden on the GDB maintenance, i.e. yet another interface language and interpreter that can easily run the same risk of bit rotting as the other interfaces. I agree that it would be a Good Thing if GDB would come with a read-to-use MI parser library. If you care about easing the pains of a GDB front-end programmer, then the project of writing such a parsing library should sound important to you. But since you said quite explicitly that you are not interested in such a project, I suspect that your interest is in playing with XML rather than easing the lives of front-end programmers out there. There's nothing wrong with your interest in XML, of course, but you must understand that the interests of GDB maintainers are elsewhere, and rightly so.