Re: GDB/MI snapshots between major release's

[Bob Rossi <bob at brasko dot net>]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 07:59:21AM -0700, Felix Lee wrote:
> Bob Rossi <bob@brasko.net>:
> > OK, at first I don't like this idea for several reasons. It seems to me
> > that with this approach you could end up releasing GDB 6.0 with MI
> > version 1 and GDB 6.1 with MI version 5. Meaning that there could be
> > several versions of MI revisions between one major release.
> > It seems that you would have to run the testsuite on every incompatible
> > change that the MI protocol goes through, including several for only one
> > release. Also, a front end would have to understand all of these
> > revisions in hopes of working with the most recent GDB (CVS snapshots).
> 
> I really don't understand what's the problem you're trying to
> solve.  MI doesn't change often.  

I'm not interested in how often it changes at all. I'm interested in
the fact that it does change.

> a front-end
> doesn't have to understand any MI changes if it doesn't want to,
> if it understands MI5, it should invoke gdb with
> --interpreter=mi5.

You are correct, a front end doesn't have to do anything if it doesn't
want to. 

However, I want my front end to understand every MI protocol and I think
that this is OK with the GDB people. Is it a goal of GDB to make sure
that front ends can not understand every protocol? I highly doubt it.

> if the gdb doesn't understand mi5, then you can try fallback to
> --interpreter=mi1.  I don't see much benefit to a front-end
> knowing more than two versions of MI, and most of the time
> knowing just one should be adequate.

Of course there is a benefit. A front end should know every version of
the MI protocol. Since it will know all of the protocols, it could work
with a given GDB using the latest/greatest protocol that that GDB
supported.

> if your front-end tries mi5 and fails because gdb has made an
> incompatible change to mi5, then that's a bug in gdb, and if that
> bug gets exposed in a user version of gdb, the answer is 'your
> gdb has a bug, install a non-buggy one'.
> 
> what's your failure scenario?

I don't know what you are talking about here. Can you see that I'm
interested in having a new front end start any GDB with it's newest MI
protocol?

Thanks,
Bob Rossi