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Re: fwd: is LLDB a threat to GDB's success? #999
- From: Pedro Alves <palves at redhat dot com>
- To: Joel Brobecker <brobecker at adacore dot com>, gdb at sourceware dot org
- Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2015 12:35:28 +0000
- Subject: Re: fwd: is LLDB a threat to GDB's success? #999
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <20150213110919 dot GN5709 at adacore dot com>
I should perhaps add that the opinion expressed was mine alone
and does not represent the opinions of my past, present, and
future employer(s). :-)
Pedro alves wrote:
>> - Good C++ support.
>>
>> This stems from modularity. lldb reuses llvm/clang (the C/C++ compiler
>> frontend) for expression evaluation/parsing, thus it has excellent
>> C++ support. GDB has its own built in C++ expression parser, which
>> is poor. GNU of course already has excellent parsers inside GCC/G++,
>> but unfortunately, for years GCC did not really welcome modularity
>> and reuse, and that now bites back, hard. As the C++ world shifts
>> more and more to C++11/C++14, the more GDB is bitten by this,
>> as it doesn't understand basic new features that have been added
>> to the language. LLDB gains support for such new features for
>> free whenever clang gains support for the same.
This of course was missing lots of context, but, I'll add that
GDB's not actually sitting and waiting here. There's a project
going on already that is exactly about reusing GCC/G++ in GDB.
The first step has landed in GDB 7.9 already, in the form of
the "compile" command, which compiles, injects, and executes
a C expression, making use of GCC through a plugin. See:
https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Compiling-and-Injecting-Code.html
We're discussing next steps for the project here:
https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb/2015-02/msg00019.html
Everyone's more than welcome to join!
Thanks,
Pedro Alves