Re: GDB/MI snapshots between major release's

[Bob Rossi <bob at brasko dot net>]

On Tue, Oct 05, 2004 at 11:06:59AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 08:59:32 +0200
> > From: Fabian Cenedese <Cenedese@indel.ch>
> > 
> > One thing that could be added is that -i mi doesn't mean the last
> > one (like mi2 now) but the last official one. So if there will be a
> > mi3 in progress mi will still select mi2.  Like that you will always
> > be using the last stable protocol. And others can work with the
> > development version by calling -i mi3. But that won't solve your
> > problem of knowing what mi version the last stable really is.
> 
> Knowing which MI version is the last stable one is important, but it's
> a separate issue.  Do we all agree that for official GDB releases the
> problem of MI versions is solved by the features that we already have,
> or do someone think that a feature that reports supported MI versions
> is still needed even for the official releases?  Let's solve the
> situation with official releases first, and get to the development
> versions later.

I didn't think there was a problem with using a GDB stable version MI
protocol. This I expected to work the way the documentation described.
I started this thread to figure out how to deal with development
versions which were a side effect of using CVS snapshot's of GDB.

However, I still think that it is necessary to know the supported MI
versions, if the GDB is a stable or a development version.
I started the thread, 
"probing GDB for MI versions"
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb/2004-10/msg00027.html
to resolve this issue (you obviously already know about this, but other
people might not)

It is a requirement of the front end to figure out the highest common MI
protocol that both it and GDB speek. This needs to be done before any
communication can occur between GDB and the front end.

> As for the problem with development versions, I think it's part of a
> larger problem: how can one know that a certain snapshot is stable
> enough to make it available to users?  

I do not know how to answer this question, and I assume that using a CVS
snapshot means that the MI protocol is under development and that it
should not be used.

> The stability of MI is a
> relatively small aspect of this larger problem, and there's always the
> solution suggested by Jason (I think): use the latest stable version
> of MI, the one released with the last official GDB version.

This seems like a good idea to me. I think that we have come to the
conclusion that the cutting edg MI protocol that comes with a CVS snapshots 
of GDB should not be used. It is essential that the front end can figure
out the last stable version of MI that was supported.

Bob Rossi