Re: gdb/mi or annotations detection

["Alain Magloire" <alain@qnx.com>]

> 
> Hi,
> 
> How is the front end supposed to detect whether or not it should use
> annotations or GDB/MI? I think there needs to be a way of doing this
> besides starting it once for detection/failure for MI, and then starting
> it again for annotations.
> 
> Also, what about different versions of MI. As it progresses different
> versions will have different functionality. How will the front end know
> what functionality each version has?
> 

I hear you loud and clear.
Eclipse/CDT, a debugger using heavily GDB/MI, is plague
with hacks trying to be compatible with all MI version.
This is probably not a problem with debuggers like insight, since they are
tied with a gdb version.

I thought, I had a PR on this, wait ... mi/1186

> ex.
>    In the first release of MI there might not be the
>    -symbol-info-linetable command. So, the front end will have to give
>    commands 'info line' over and over. Then, when this command becomes
>    available in the next release, the front end can start using it
>    instead.
> 
> The front end can not do a 'gdb --version' because usually there are
> gdb's installed that are cvs snapshots ( debian ).
> 

"gdb --version", generates all sort of things depending on the platform, the distrubution, etc ..
not reliable

> Does anyone have any ideas?
> 

-mi-level ? 8-)

bye,