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Re: Library interface to GDB


Tom Tromey <tromey@cygnus.com> writes:

> >>>>> "Martin" == Martin Baulig <martin@home-of-linux.org> writes:
> 
> I don't know the answers to your gdb questions.
> 
> Martin> Basically I want to write a GNOME frontend for gdb, but not
> Martin> just "yet another gdb frontend", but *the* gdb
> Martin> frontend. Ideally it should export all its functionallity
> Martin> through CORBA so you can also use it in other projects like
> Martin> GNU Emacs, KDE or whatever.
> 
> Are you familiar with dryad?
> The author is working on a library that can be used to communicate
> with gdb.  He is also writing a CORBA interface to gdb.

I haven't looked very closely at it yet, but it really looks good.

> I think it would make sense for these parts to be separate from the
> actual GUI.  That way if you don't like his GUI for some reason you
> can implement your own -- but without reinventing the useful
> GUI-independent pieces.

Yes, I agree. I like his GUI, but other people (for instance KDE folks)
may not like it and prefer using another.

The problem I see at the moment is that the only way to communicate with
gdb is to open a pipe and parse it's output. This affects xxgdb, dryad and
any other GUI.

This means that the first thing every author of any gdb GUI needs to do is
to write a parser. Such a parser is difficult to write, very inefficient and
it will always be buggy.

libgdb (Tom, you wrote it?) was already a good start to solve this problem,
but sure it has its problems.

-- 
Martin Baulig - martin@home-of-linux.org - http://www.home-of-linux.org

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