Re: Windows support in GDB

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow at false dot org>]

Hi Mark,

On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 05:13:43PM +0200, Mark Kettenis wrote:
> Guys, I'm getting a bit of an uneasy feeling here.  It may be that I'm
> getting the wrong impression here, but I've seen quite a bit more
> Windows-related patches than I had in mind when Mark started submitted
> his first patches and said they were fairly limited and mostly some
> configure bits.  The problem here is that they mostly concern the

Paul's new patches are issues that we didn't encounter when we built
our first generation of Windows toolchains.  I apologize for our
failures to be perfect and predict the future.  What more can you ask
of us?

By the way, I'd still characterize these patches as fairly limited and
mostly configure-related.  All the readline patches certainly are, for
instance.

The SIGTRAP patch makes me a little uncomfortable - and it makes Paul
a bit nervous too.  That's why it wasn't submitted for mainline.  The
right fix is to not use host signal numbers in the simulator interface.

> non-POSIX nature of Windows, which sets its quit far apart from the
> traditional Unix-like systems that have been converging towards POSIX
> for quite some time now.  This means that we really need to have some
> commitment from the Windows user community for maintaining this stuff.
> Otherwise this will become another MetroWerks disaster.

I don't know what you're referring to.  Are you thinking of the HP
merge?

> It's fairly obvious that this development is coming from CodeSourcery.
> There's nothing wrong with that, but I'd like to ask CodeSourcery what
> their commitment to maintaining this new code is.  In the past we have
> seen quite a few contributions from embedded sofware companies.  In
> many cases these contributions were apparently done as contract work,
> and after the work was completed the code was never touched again.
> Can CodeSourcery gives some clarification on this matter?

We have a strong push from our customers - not just any one customer -
for these features.  These are ongoing maintenance contracts and we
will be continuing to support it for the foreseeable future.  Also, I
imagine that once GDB starts to build out of the box on Windows, more
and more people will begin to use it there.  There's a staggering
demand for native Windows-hosted tools.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC