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* Is the project still alive ?
@ 2014-06-24 11:28 Patrick Monnerat
  2014-06-24 17:25 ` Bruce Dawson
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Patrick Monnerat @ 2014-06-24 11:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: insight

 
The question is motivated by:
 
- No stable release for 5 years.
- Sources not yet migrated to git: repository exists but is empty.
- Bundles are frozen.
- No commit for 5 month.
- Does not work with itcl/itk 4.
- VERY low mailing list activity.
 
As Fedora packager, I have more and more bug requests about this
product, mainly about things that have not evolved enough for the future
F21 release.
 
Although no alternate gdb GUI is satisfactory, i think seriously of
"end-of-life'ing" this package in Fedora :-((
 
Some news would be welcomed.
Thanks
Patrick

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* RE: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-06-24 11:28 Is the project still alive ? Patrick Monnerat
@ 2014-06-24 17:25 ` Bruce Dawson
  2014-06-25 22:52 ` Keith Seitz
  2014-09-04  5:54 ` Pavel Fedin
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Bruce Dawson @ 2014-06-24 17:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 'Patrick Monnerat', insight

I've moved to QtCreator. I've found it to be a very satisfactory gdb GUI.

-----Original Message-----
From: insight-owner@sourceware.org [mailto:insight-owner@sourceware.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Monnerat
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2014 4:28 AM
To: insight@sourceware.org
Subject: Is the project still alive ?

 
The question is motivated by:
 
- No stable release for 5 years.
- Sources not yet migrated to git: repository exists but is empty.
- Bundles are frozen.
- No commit for 5 month.
- Does not work with itcl/itk 4.
- VERY low mailing list activity.
 
As Fedora packager, I have more and more bug requests about this product, mainly about things that have not evolved enough for the future
F21 release.
 
Although no alternate gdb GUI is satisfactory, i think seriously of "end-of-life'ing" this package in Fedora :-((
 
Some news would be welcomed.
Thanks
Patrick

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-06-24 11:28 Is the project still alive ? Patrick Monnerat
  2014-06-24 17:25 ` Bruce Dawson
@ 2014-06-25 22:52 ` Keith Seitz
  2014-06-26 10:15   ` Patrick Monnerat
  2014-07-22 17:18   ` Tom Tromey
  2014-09-04  5:54 ` Pavel Fedin
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Keith Seitz @ 2014-06-25 22:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Patrick Monnerat, insight

Hi, Patrick,

I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't.

I've been struggling with this very question for about a year now. It 
isn't really clear to me that EOLing Insight would affect more than a 
handful of people, and there are alternatives out there (Nemevier, 
Eclipse-based standalone, QtCreator, Code::Blocks, ...).

Red Hat is no longer using Insight, and, as you correctly state, my time 
and paycheck go to working on different projects. Contributions are 
(very) few and (very) far between.

A GIT repository exists, but I have not yet pushed it to sourceware. 
When I last played with this, I wasn't very pleased by the direction it 
was going. It was essentially a clone of the gdb repo with the 
insight/libgui bits thrown in. Yuck. [If anyone has any better ideas, 
I'm all eyes/ears.]

At one time, my immediate for goal for the project was a slight/small 
"reboot":
1) create GIT repo [created, not published, not happy with it]
2) NO in-tree Tcl, Tk, Itcl, Itk, iwidgets, etc. All must be provided by 
the platform [or maybe on an auxiliary branch?]
3) Remove dependency on/prune libgui [TkTable is particularly troubling]
4) Linux-only first "release"; cygwin using X and mingw to follow
5) Remove all the Foundry/Code Fusion junk from the tree and 
simplify/audit the codebase.
6) Formalize and make "regular" snapshots/updates/releases

I've toyed with jumping straight to a rewrite based on Tom Tromey's 
python-based efforts, but it is still unclear whether that would work 
well (enough?) on all the platforms I care about (Linux, MinGW, Cygwin). 
That notwithstanding, I had convinced myself that I would need a 
stop-gap solution until a rewrite was sufficiently advanced to be useful.

In the end, a part of me still believes that there is an audience for 
Insight or something insight-like, i.e., a lightweight, *fast*, non-MI 
GUI for gdb.

Keith

PS. This note has reminded me that I really should install F21 and see 
where that's headed... /me installs rawhide

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* RE: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-06-25 22:52 ` Keith Seitz
@ 2014-06-26 10:15   ` Patrick Monnerat
  2014-07-22 17:18   ` Tom Tromey
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Patrick Monnerat @ 2014-06-26 10:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Keith Seitz, insight

 
Keith Seitz wrote:
> Hi, Patrick,

Hi Keith,
Thanks for your reply.

> I've been struggling with this very question for about a year now. It
isn't really clear to me that EOLing Insight would affect more than a
handful of people, and there are alternatives out there (Nemevier,
Eclipse-based standalone, QtCreator, Code::Blocks, ...).

I do not have statistics about use and installation count in Fedora, but
I received some crash reports and I can imagine some people are still
interested in insight in the Fedora community.

> A GIT repository exists, but I have not yet pushed it to sourceware.

Well, I saw sourceware git repo was empty and yesterday I started to try
to build a local git repo, using submodules. I hope we don't do the same
thing...

> When I last played with this, I wasn't very pleased by the direction
it was going. It was essentially a clone of the gdb repo with the
insight/libgui bits thrown in. Yuck. [If anyone has any better ideas,
I'm all eyes/ears.]

Submodules may help, but not completely: we cannot create the exact dir
structure as the CVS config did with git. In addition, gdbtk was part of
the "real" gdb directory and dropped out for the "gdb" checkout. With
the binutils-gdb git repo, we are in the opposite case.
I think migration to git can be done 2 ways:
1) Use submodules, then a rootdir script to "compose" the current dir
structure in a subdirectory.
2) Reorganize the Makefiles to have the gdbtk directory outside of gdb.
IMHO, 2) is more elegant, but harder to perform.
I tried yesterday solution 1), but I'm not happy either.

> At one time, my immediate for goal for the project was a slight/small
"reboot":
> 1) create GIT repo [created, not published, not happy with it]
> 2) NO in-tree Tcl, Tk, Itcl, Itk, iwidgets, etc. All must be provided
by the platform [or maybe on an auxiliary branch?]
> 3) Remove dependency on/prune libgui [TkTable is particularly
troubling]
> 4) Linux-only first "release"; cygwin using X and mingw to follow
> 5) Remove all the Foundry/Code Fusion junk from the tree and
simplify/audit the codebase.
> 6) Formalize and make "regular" snapshots/updates/releases

In my tentative, tcl/tk/itcl/itk are submodules from
github.com/tcklk/... And iwidgets (that is no longer within the itk
tree) is a snapshot since it is not kept in a git repo (using fossil). I
wanted to keep these bundles for the official insight repo, since
sourceware projects mostly seems "self-contained". But dropping the
bundles is OK for my one use. What about other users?
 
> I've toyed with jumping straight to a rewrite based on Tom Tromey's
python-based efforts, but it is still unclear whether that would work
well (enough?) on all the platforms I care about (Linux, MinGW, Cygwin).

That notwithstanding, I had convinced myself that I would need a
stop-gap solution until a rewrite was sufficiently advanced to be
useful.

You mean you want to drop (i)tcl/tk and use python? This would be a
great job, but would probably spend a long time before we have a running
version. This will also be the death of the present version, since no
update effort to the tcl/tk version will be done in the meantime. In
this case, I'd better EOL the Fedora package and re-emerge it when
Python version will be available.

> In the end, a part of me still believes that there is an audience for
Insight or something insight-like, i.e., a lightweight, *fast*, non-MI
GUI for gdb.

We're 100% OK on that :-)

Tell me if I can help.

Cheers,
Patrick

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-06-25 22:52 ` Keith Seitz
  2014-06-26 10:15   ` Patrick Monnerat
@ 2014-07-22 17:18   ` Tom Tromey
  2014-07-22 17:42     ` Patrick Monnerat
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Tom Tromey @ 2014-07-22 17:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Keith Seitz; +Cc: Patrick Monnerat, insight

Keith> A GIT repository exists, but I have not yet pushed it to
Keith> sourceware. When I last played with this, I wasn't very pleased by the
Keith> direction it was going. It was essentially a clone of the gdb repo
Keith> with the insight/libgui bits thrown in. Yuck. [If anyone has any
Keith> better ideas, I'm all eyes/ears.]

I don't really have a good solution for you.

One idea is git submodules plus mumble mumble something to make it work
nicely.  Maybe you noticed my handwaving.

Another idea is to just have a regular branch with periodic merges from
gdb.  This means a messier history perhaps but it would certainly work.

Either way it would be nice to know what is going on, as insight is the
only user of some APIs in gdb, and I have some un-committed patches to
change some of these -- blocked since the insight situation is unclear.

Tom

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* RE: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-07-22 17:18   ` Tom Tromey
@ 2014-07-22 17:42     ` Patrick Monnerat
  2014-07-22 17:46       ` Keith Seitz
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Patrick Monnerat @ 2014-07-22 17:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Tom Tromey, Keith Seitz; +Cc: insight


Tom Tromey wrote:
> One idea is git submodules plus mumble mumble something to make it
work nicely.  Maybe you noticed my handwaving.

This is what I've succeeded to run here (as a local git repo)...

By the way: @Keith: did you received the tarball of my git repo ? Maybe
this is time to publish or update or comment or... reject it.

Cheers,
Patrick

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-07-22 17:42     ` Patrick Monnerat
@ 2014-07-22 17:46       ` Keith Seitz
  2014-07-23 10:14         ` Patrick Monnerat
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Keith Seitz @ 2014-07-22 17:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Patrick Monnerat; +Cc: insight

On 07/22/2014 10:41 AM, Patrick Monnerat wrote:
 >
> Tom Tromey wrote:
>> One idea is git submodules plus mumble mumble something to make it
> work nicely.  Maybe you noticed my handwaving.
>
> This is what I've succeeded to run here (as a local git repo)...
>
> By the way: @Keith: did you received the tarball of my git repo ? Maybe
> this is time to publish or update or comment or... reject it.

Yeah, I have received it, but because of my recent tendinitis problems, 
I have zero time for play. All my free/play time is scheduled for rest. :-(

I will do my best to take a look at what you've done. It sounds like 
you're headed in a direction that encompasses the "ideal" build for 
insight. Perhaps I can attempt to define some sort of extension API for 
gdb to cleanup the rest. [But I seriously doubt that (some) gdb 
maintainers would allow this.]

Keith

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* RE: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-07-22 17:46       ` Keith Seitz
@ 2014-07-23 10:14         ` Patrick Monnerat
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Patrick Monnerat @ 2014-07-23 10:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Keith Seitz; +Cc: insight

Keith Seitz wrote:

>> By the way: @Keith: did you received the tarball of my git repo ? 
>> Maybe this is time to publish or update or comment or... reject it.

> Yeah, I have received it, but because of my recent tendinitis
problems, I have zero time for play. All my free/play time is scheduled
for rest. :-(

I'm really sorry for you your tendinitis does not go away. In the
meantime, you can give me write access to the sourceware git repository:
I'll upload my "work in progress" there and so we'll have a common
reference base. Of course, if you don't like it you can zap it after
all: in any case there will be no damage to what officially exists yet
because the git repo is currently empty.

> I will do my best to take a look at what you've done. It sounds like
you're headed in a direction that encompasses the "ideal" build for
insight. Perhaps I can attempt to define some sort of extension API for
gdb to cleanup the rest. [But I seriously doubt that (some) gdb
maintainers would allow this.]

I don't think there's an "ideal" solution, with regards to the project
structure. In a modern approach, we should not deal with bundles and
"third part" code should be independent libraries. We could decide to do
so with (i)tcl/tk and iwidgets and even with libgui (by having it as a
project by itself). But gdb is definitely not such an API library, and
it has itself a bundled structure. Thus what you call "ideal" is just
the less bad compromise :-/

Regards,
Patrick

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* RE: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-06-24 11:28 Is the project still alive ? Patrick Monnerat
  2014-06-24 17:25 ` Bruce Dawson
  2014-06-25 22:52 ` Keith Seitz
@ 2014-09-04  5:54 ` Pavel Fedin
  2014-09-04  8:01   ` Richard Tierney
  2014-09-04 12:39   ` Fernando Nasser
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Pavel Fedin @ 2014-09-04  5:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 'Patrick Monnerat'; +Cc: insight

 Hello!

> The question is motivated by:
> 
> - No stable release for 5 years.
> - Sources not yet migrated to git: repository exists but is empty.
> - Bundles are frozen.
> - No commit for 5 month.
> - Does not work with itcl/itk 4.
> - VERY low mailing list activity.

 Let me say my voice.
 I tried to take a look at several GDB GUIs. Actually, Insight has one
strong point, which no replacement offers. It very well supports
cross-development and remote debugging. I would say it was created for this
purpose. Yes, its GUI lacks some functions, like listing shared libraries,
and it is a bit buggy, but it also has console window, which perfectly
fulfills everything. This means i can combine the power of both GUI and
command line - the code and registers are always at my eyes, but i can also
do sophisticated things via command line.
 I would say that Insight definitely does not deserve being forgotten. And i
don't like Eclipse because Java is slow and memory-hungry.
 Personally i use Insight on Cygwin for some debugging and core dump
analysis and it works pretty well.

Kind regards,
Pavel Fedin
Expert Engineer
Samsung Electronics Research center Russia


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-09-04  5:54 ` Pavel Fedin
@ 2014-09-04  8:01   ` Richard Tierney
  2014-09-04 12:39   ` Fernando Nasser
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Richard Tierney @ 2014-09-04  8:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
  Cc: insight


>   I would say that Insight definitely does not deserve being forgotten. And i
> don't like Eclipse because Java is slow and memory-hungry.

I dumped Eclipse because Java caused so much trouble. I'll go commercial 
if Insight disappears. My only significant issue at the moment is that 
there's some sort of font issue on RHEL6 that makes it look awful. 
Otherwise, it's great, notwithstanding no real ability to handle C++/STL 
containers.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-09-04  5:54 ` Pavel Fedin
  2014-09-04  8:01   ` Richard Tierney
@ 2014-09-04 12:39   ` Fernando Nasser
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Fernando Nasser @ 2014-09-04 12:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: insight

+1

Insight deserves more attention.  I wish I could dedicate more time to 
it but my current job position is not allowing for it.

We need some new volunteers to help keeping up with gdb releases, fixing 
bugs and adding missing features.

Fernando


On 2014-09-04, 1:54 AM, Pavel Fedin wrote:
>   Hello!
>
>> The question is motivated by:
>>
>> - No stable release for 5 years.
>> - Sources not yet migrated to git: repository exists but is empty.
>> - Bundles are frozen.
>> - No commit for 5 month.
>> - Does not work with itcl/itk 4.
>> - VERY low mailing list activity.
>   Let me say my voice.
>   I tried to take a look at several GDB GUIs. Actually, Insight has one
> strong point, which no replacement offers. It very well supports
> cross-development and remote debugging. I would say it was created for this
> purpose. Yes, its GUI lacks some functions, like listing shared libraries,
> and it is a bit buggy, but it also has console window, which perfectly
> fulfills everything. This means i can combine the power of both GUI and
> command line - the code and registers are always at my eyes, but i can also
> do sophisticated things via command line.
>   I would say that Insight definitely does not deserve being forgotten. And i
> don't like Eclipse because Java is slow and memory-hungry.
>   Personally i use Insight on Cygwin for some debugging and core dump
> analysis and it works pretty well.
>
> Kind regards,
> Pavel Fedin
> Expert Engineer
> Samsung Electronics Research center Russia
>
>
>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* RE: Is the project still alive ?
  2014-06-25  5:44 Roland Schwingel
@ 2014-06-25 10:43 ` Patrick Monnerat
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Patrick Monnerat @ 2014-06-25 10:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Roland Schwingel, insight

 
Roland Schwingel wrote:

> I am using insight daily on windows (with tcl/tk 8.6 and still
itcl/itk 3.3) in a mingw-build (so native GUI). It runs quite well.

I'm sure it does. But I have to stick to Fedora policies that states
bundles are not aceptable in the distribution, therefore the stock
itcl/itk (4.0) must then be used.

> I am very sad about the stall of insight. I would find a big
disadvantage if it would go away completely.

Totally agreed. But we are dependent of the insight "core team" (?)
that, IMHO mainly consists in Keith (as an auxiliary job), with the help
of some contributions like yours and mine.

I have to say I don't have enough time and skills to maintain insight
seriously: I've spent several days in the last month to try to make it
work with the F21 constraints... without success. Bugs might be in
itcl/itk, but debugging this stuff is really a pain in the ass :-(

> I hope a solution can be found for this.

Me too, of course !
On a practical standpoint, the Fedora pressure for an update is so high
I wouldn't stand it long: the solution (un-stall of the project) should
be quick now.

> If the official end of the project would be announced the interfaces
in gdb itself to allow insight to connect to gdb would be removed quite
soon - I believe. Making it impossible for people like me to build
insight against current gdb sources.

A stalled project is a dead project!... even if not official :-(

> Insight must not die!

Again, 100% OK with you. Nevertheless, this is not in my hands (and if
it were, I'll be much puzzled).

If some developer wants to investigate, I can give some info about what
I already found.

I'll monitor this list and the CVS/git repositories the next 2 weeks: if
nothing constructive happens, I'll resign and EOL the Fedora package :-(

Thanks for your reply.

Cheers,
Patrick

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: Is the project still alive ?
@ 2014-06-25  5:44 Roland Schwingel
  2014-06-25 10:43 ` Patrick Monnerat
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Roland Schwingel @ 2014-06-25  5:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: insight

Hi...

I am using insight daily on windows (with tcl/tk 8.6 and still itcl/itk 
3.3) in a mingw-build (so native GUI). It runs quite well.

I am very sad about the stall of insight. I would find a big 
disadvantage if it would go away completely.

I hope a solution can be found for this. If the official end of the 
project would be announced the interfaces in gdb itself to allow insight
to connect to gdb would be removed quite soon - I believe. Making it 
impossible for people like me to build insight against current gdb sources.

Insight must not die!

Just my $0,02.

Roland

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2014-09-04 12:39 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2014-06-24 11:28 Is the project still alive ? Patrick Monnerat
2014-06-24 17:25 ` Bruce Dawson
2014-06-25 22:52 ` Keith Seitz
2014-06-26 10:15   ` Patrick Monnerat
2014-07-22 17:18   ` Tom Tromey
2014-07-22 17:42     ` Patrick Monnerat
2014-07-22 17:46       ` Keith Seitz
2014-07-23 10:14         ` Patrick Monnerat
2014-09-04  5:54 ` Pavel Fedin
2014-09-04  8:01   ` Richard Tierney
2014-09-04 12:39   ` Fernando Nasser
2014-06-25  5:44 Roland Schwingel
2014-06-25 10:43 ` Patrick Monnerat

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