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Re: New GDB snapshot available



   Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 11:18:13 -0500
   From: David Edelsohn <dje@watson.ibm.com>

	   GDB development is part of the GNU Project.  The maintainer of GDB
   is suppose to work for the benefit of the GNU Project.  Developing the GNU
   system (including GNU/Linux systems) is a central focus of the GNU
   Project.  On the EGCS Project (also hosted by Cygnus), we are making extra
   efforts to support GNU/Linux's needs and requirements.  It sounds like a
   similar effort is needed for GDB.

The GDB situation is a little different.  For a long time, both GCC
and GDB followed the "cathedral" model of development, with a smaller
number of hackers operating in a more controlled environment.  This
wasn't working well for GCC, and the contention over this resulted in
the EGCS revolution.  Up until recently, there weren't as many people
interested in GDB, so the old model has continued along uncontested.
However, I'm seeing that the cathedral model will break down for GDB
as well, hurried along by the needs of the free OSes, so I'd like to
have an evolution instead of a revolution.

Old habits are hard to change, so things won't all be different
overnight.  Even so, I believe that if GDB development is forked a la
EGCS, we will have failed as maintainers, and I'm very keen to prevent
that from happening.

							Stan