From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 3217 invoked by alias); 11 Aug 2004 22:43:08 -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 3204 invoked from network); 11 Aug 2004 22:43:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO atlantic.mail.pas.earthlink.net) (207.217.120.179) by sourceware.org with SMTP; 11 Aug 2004 22:43:07 -0000 Received: from ip216-26-76-134.dsl.du.teleport.com ([216.26.76.134] helo=stray.canids) by atlantic.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 1Bv1oJ-0000rj-00 for gdb@sources.redhat.com; Wed, 11 Aug 2004 15:43:07 -0700 Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by stray.canids (Postfix) with ESMTP id D33D64D4015 for ; Wed, 11 Aug 2004 15:43:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Felix Lee To: gdb@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: GDB/XMI (XML Machine Interface) References: <5956F1E2-EB0D-11D8-9949-000A9569836A@apple.com> <8A54B4DA-EB30-11D8-9650-000A95DA1012@speakeasy.net> <20040811062809.196A34D4015@stray.canids> In-Reply-To: on Wed, 11 Aug 2004 01:25:10 PDT from Chris Friesen Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 22:43:00 -0000 Message-Id: <20040811224305.D33D64D4015@stray.canids> X-SW-Source: 2004-08/txt/msg00190.txt.bz2 Chris Friesen : > The code is an implementation that doesn't convey the objectives or > intent. Is that behavior a bug or feature in the code? if a programmer isn't going to explain it in the code, why expect them to explain it in a spec? having a separate spec is like removing comments from the source and putting them in a different file, which introduces maintenance problems. there's more chance of code and description being in sync if they're "near" each other, and extraction can be automated. well, a spec is probably more closely related to testcases than to implementation. so perhaps in an ideal world, an interface would be a single document that's easy to read, easy to parse, and easy to test against. (it's not clear to me that an xml dtd is any of those attributes, but I don't have a strong objection to it.) --