Re: Preparing for the GDB 5.0 / GDB 2000 / GDB2k release

[Kevin Hendricks <khendricks at ivey dot uwo dot ca>]

Hi,

> What you are really saying is that it's better to put hacks and crap in 
> the tree, and hope someone comes along and does it right, removing the 
> hack, while making it even more a living hell for everyone else to 
> understand.

Why is eveything "not perfect" considered a hack or crap?  I for one don't
think Kevin Buettner's patch is a hack or crap at all. Please stop equating
what we want to see added with crap.

> See, here is your fatal mistake.
> You are making the assumption that users will clean it up, make it work, 
> and improve it.
> While this may be true in other projects, it's not really true in GDB's 
> case.

I think your attitude here is just wrong (and frankly part of the whole gdb
problem).  You obviously think you have cornered the market on some unique
programming skill.  This is simply not true.  Users can and will help.  I would
help (I was part of Blackdown's jdk porting team until recent events forced me
to move on), Franz would help (he is *the* gcc person for ppc and without his
work with them we (ppc) would still be in the dark ages, Gary Thomas would help
(he is really the father of the whole linux ppc movement and is single handedly
responsible for much of the code that ppc uses), etc.  We just need something
to start playing with.  As it stands, we can't even submit official bug
reports.   

Please stop thinking that gdb is so complex that only a maintainer can help
(seen the inside of many multi-threaded virtual machines latesly?).  Sure we
won't be as good as you, we won't be as productive as you, but we (and others)
really can help. I think we are proof of that.  Unfortunately when I submitted 
the original ppc patch (based on Kevin Buettner work) back around 4.16 or
earlier,  I just never dreamed it would take this long to get anything there
done with it.  

Perhaps cygnus plays too large a role in tool development.  Perhaps open source
tools should not be tied so closely to any one company.  Too many conflicts of
interest?  Too many paying customers versus the rest of us?  I just don't know.

But whatever the outcome, please stop assuming that all "users" are idiots. 
This is simply not the case and results in much of the bad or negative
"mindset" I have seen in the gdb lists and tried to point out to Stan.

Thanks for responding to my post.  I am not sure we will ever agree on how
things should be done but we are talking about it which is more than has been
done of late.

Take care,

Kevin