Re: MI and backwards compatibility

["Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 11:38:15 -0400
> From: Bob Rossi <bob@brasko.net>
> 
> Ping.

Well, one day without a response is hardly a good reason for a ping,
I'd say.  Especially during weekends.  I suggest to be slightly more
patient.

> I guess the main questions is, is the goal of GDB to support old
> versions of MI? For instance, if GDB is currently at MI3, will it
> support a front end that only knows MI2?

It should, and it does in most cases.

In those cases where the new MI version is too incompatible with the
previous one, we provide a suitable -interpreter=mi<N> switch to
alleviate the problem.

Thus, a frond-end which is known not to work with a new MI version
should use an explicit -interpreter=mi<N> switch when it invokes GDB.
The -version command-line switch is available to find out what GDB
version you are running with.

> If so, then I need the
> documentation for the MI2 interface if I want to make my front end work
> with that version of the protocol.

If needed, you can find the documentation of the MI2 interface in the
GDB documentation of the last version that supported MI2 as its
default MI interpreter.

However, I don't see why would you need to look up the old manual: the
previous versions of MI are maintained for those front ends that are
already written, so that they will not need anything beyond an
explicit mi<N> request to run with a version of GDB that was released
after the fron end.  Thus, a front end which is being developed
_after_ MI3 is released will not need to support MI2 in most cases,
right?