Re: PATCH: Remove dead code, clear breakpoint ignore counts?

[Pedro Alves <pedro at codesourcery dot com>]

On Tuesday 14 October 2008 21:03:44, Tom Tromey wrote:
> >>>>> "Pedro" == Pedro Alves <pedro@codesourcery.com> writes:
> 
> Pedro> Seems like it.  :-) I guess I wasn't that clear, but the actual
> Pedro> code that initialy bothered me was the clearing the *ignore*
> Pedro> counts in generic_mourn_inferior, or better, the comment there
> Pedro> that I must have read a hundred times already by now, although
> Pedro> it's dead code.
> 
> I say just nuke it.  If it has been dead for 14 years, then nobody
> cares.

Yeah.  I've just done so.

> Pedro> Just curious, do people think that it's useful to clear the hit
> Pedro> count automatically at all, considering that we do it on "run" but not
> Pedro> on "attach" or "target remote"?
> 
> I occasionally use this feature to figure out how I ought to set
> ignore counts.  E.g., set a breakpoint, run, "c 99999", wait for the
> crash, and then ignore one less than the hit count.
> 
> This idiom relies on re-running, so it is not very useful with attach.

I guess that comes from the fact that there's no easy way to reset the
hit count of the breakpoint (or of all breakpoints), other than
delete,re-create'ing it (them).

> I guess it is tough to change behavior that has been deployed for many
> years, since it is hard to guess how people are using it.

Yeah.

> Pedro> I can't seem to make up my mind on it.  It's still logicaly the
> Pedro> same breakpoint across runs, so it could make sense to not do
> Pedro> so.
> 
> Offhand I could not think of a way I would use the hit count if it
> were not auto-cleared.  When would I want to know the accumulated
> total of hits across all runs?

I dunno.  I don't actually rely on those counters myself that often.
I was noticing that currently, in a multi-process GDB, if I do "run"
followed by another "run", while the first process is still live (I
don't kill it), all hit counts are being reset.  That seemed wrong.

I guess we'll be getting back to this sooner or later.  I'm happy
for now.  :-)

Thanks!

-- 
Pedro Alves