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Re: pretty-printing update


Sorry, sent this accidentally as private mail only:

On Monday 06 October 2008 16:42:06  Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 04:20:17PM +0200, André Pönitz wrote:
> > Urm... I have the feeling this is going to place too much of the 
> > 'business logic' that decides what to print, to what detail and
> > in what format on the gdb side, leading to a generic solution
> > that will not scale well to different, possibly even structurally
> > different ?'output consumers'. [1]
> 
> I think that generating any output in a consumer-provided format would
> be a mistake. ?When you have issues like your [1], you need to talk to
> the GDB developers about them and work out some better way to solve
> the problem - and then it will benefit all consumers.

Well, my view obviously differs: So far gdb output more often than not
has a verbosity level that is unsuitable for me: Often some information
known to gdb is missing and I need more roundtrips to retrieve them, 
or I get swamped by information that I won't display, still it clogs the line.

So ?_some_ selection of verbosity seems to be in order, and, incidentally,
some gdb developers seemed to think likewise in the past, otherwise it
would be hard to explain how the parameters to, say, -stack-list-arguments,
or -stack-list-locals, or -var-list-children, or even most of the "set print" 
commands came into existence. These options pretty much look like
ad hoc "solutions" to the general problem of "user defined verbosity".

> Sorry for coming down on you about this; it's not directed just at
> you, but at most front end developers. 

*grin* ?Rest assured that I don't take that personally, and that I think
that I can stand a bit more heat in email discussions than I've ever
seen on the gdb lists. So better be blunt lest I miss the point...

> Don't work around GDB! ?Tell
> GDB what you need, instead, and work with it.

Well, I have to live with legacy gdb, and I have to live with gdb on Mac.
So no matter what you do _now_ I'll be bound to workarounds for the
foreseeable future.

A wish list is coming in the next mail nevertheless ;-)

Andre'
--- Begin Message ---
On Monday 06 October 2008 16:42:06 you wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 04:20:17PM +0200, André Pönitz wrote:
> > Urm... I have the feeling this is going to place too much of the 
> > 'business logic' that decides what to print, to what detail and
> > in what format on the gdb side, leading to a generic solution
> > that will not scale well to different, possibly even structurally
> > different  'output consumers'. [1]
> 
> I think that generating any output in a consumer-provided format would
> be a mistake.  When you have issues like your [1], you need to talk to
> the GDB developers about them and work out some better way to solve
> the problem - and then it will benefit all consumers.

Well, my view obviously differs: So far gdb output more often than not
has a verbosity level that is unsuitable for me: Often some information
known to gdb is missing and I need more roundtrips to retrieve them, 
or I get swamped by information that I won't display, still it clogs the line.

So  _some_ selection of verbosity seems to be in order, and, incidentally,
some gdb developers seemed to think likewise in the past, otherwise it
would be hard to explain how the parameters to, say, -stack-list-arguments,
or -stack-list-locals, or -var-list-children, or even most of the "set print" 
commands came into existence. These options pretty much look like
ad hoc "solutions" to the general problem of "user defined verbosity".

> Sorry for coming down on you about this; it's not directed just at
> you, but at most front end developers. 

*grin*  Rest assured that I don't take that personally, and that I think
that I can stand a bit more heat in email discussions than I've ever
seen on the gdb lists. So better be blunt lest I miss the point...

> Don't work around GDB!  Tell
> GDB what you need, instead, and work with it.

Well, I have to live with legacy gdb, and I have to live with gdb on Mac.
So no matter what you do _now_ I'll be bound to workarounds for the
foreseeable future.

A wish list is coming in the next mail nevertheless ;-)

Andre'

--- End Message ---

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