Useful MI functions marked @ignore in gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo.

Useful MI functions marked @ignore in gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo.

[Carlos O'Donell]

I was recently looking at the problem of displaying global and local variables from an IDE front-end that uses MI (Eclipse).

I noticed that gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo has a list of what appear to be really useful MI functions for working with symbols.

Unfortunately all of those functions are wraped with @ignore/@end ignore.

None of these MI functions are implemented in gdb/mi/mi-symbol-cmds.c, and never have been (according to the CVS history, and yes I did work my way back through the DOS 8.3 rename into the attic).

What's the story with these hidden, but documented MI functions?

These functions look like they would be really useful to an front-end that wants to display variables that have global scope.

Comments?

Cheers,
Carlos.
-- 
Carlos O'Donell
Mentor Graphics / CodeSourcery
carlos_odonell@mentor.com
carlos@codesourcery.com
+1 (613) 963 1026

Re: Useful MI functions marked @ignore in gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo.

[Joel Brobecker]

> What's the story with these hidden, but documented MI functions?

This was a long time ago. My guess is that these commands were part
of the initial design, and the design got captured as a hidden part
of the documentation, but the commands themselves never got implemented.
Most of the time, it's mostly a matter of writing the code... They
usually get implemented when someone really needing the functionality
just goes ahead and implements it.

-- 
Joel

Re: Useful MI functions marked @ignore in gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo.

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 4/11/2012 5:48 PM, Joel Brobecker wrote:
>> What's the story with these hidden, but documented MI functions?
> 
> This was a long time ago. My guess is that these commands were part
> of the initial design, and the design got captured as a hidden part
> of the documentation, but the commands themselves never got implemented.
> Most of the time, it's mostly a matter of writing the code... They
> usually get implemented when someone really needing the functionality
> just goes ahead and implements it.
> 

Excellent, that's what I like to hear.

It was just sufficiently odd to see documentation *before* code that I thought I should ask.

Cheers,
Carlos.
-- 
Carlos O'Donell
Mentor Graphics / CodeSourcery
carlos_odonell@mentor.com
carlos@codesourcery.com
+1 (613) 963 1026

Re: Useful MI functions marked @ignore in gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:48:22 -0700
> From: Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>
> Cc: gdb@sourceware.org
> 
> > What's the story with these hidden, but documented MI functions?
> 
> This was a long time ago. My guess is that these commands were part
> of the initial design, and the design got captured as a hidden part
> of the documentation, but the commands themselves never got implemented.

That's right.  In fact, the MI part of the manual is the design
document converted to Texinfo when MI was added to the official
version of GDB.

Re: Useful MI functions marked @ignore in gdb/doc/gdb.texinfo.

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 4/12/2012 1:43 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:48:22 -0700
>> From: Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>
>> Cc: gdb@sourceware.org
>>
>>> What's the story with these hidden, but documented MI functions?
>>
>> This was a long time ago. My guess is that these commands were part
>> of the initial design, and the design got captured as a hidden part
>> of the documentation, but the commands themselves never got implemented.
> 
> That's right.  In fact, the MI part of the manual is the design
> document converted to Texinfo when MI was added to the official
> version of GDB.

We'll propose something once we get our use cases down.

Eli, Joel, thanks for the background.

Cheers,
Carlos.
-- 
Carlos O'Donell
Mentor Graphics / CodeSourcery
carlos_odonell@mentor.com
carlos@codesourcery.com
+1 (613) 963 1026