Re: gdb + perl

[Kevin Buettner <kevinb at redhat dot com>]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:42:30 -0800 (PST)
Kip Macy <kmacy@fsmware.com> wrote:

> I know it is bad form to follow-up on one's own messages, but since I
> took the time to pull the changes into 6.0 I thought I'd make them
> available to anyone who might be curious about it.
> 
> Documentation:
> http://www.fsmware.com/gdb/gdb_ffi.html
> Tarball:
> http://www.fsmware.com/gdb/gdb-6.0-perl.tgz
> 
> perl support can be turned on by passing --enable-ffiperl to configure.
> 
> Even if it isn't deemed appropriate for mainline inclusion, I'm eager to
> hear any feedback.

Thanks for making your changes available.

I happen to like the idea of providing access to perl from GDB, but then
I also happen to like perl.

My hunch is that you'll have a hard time getting these changes into
mainline GDB.  The reason for this hunch is as follows:

  1) I don't think that perl would be the first choice for an
     extension language for very many of the GDB maintainers.  That
     said, if we were to take a vote, I have no idea what the first
     choice would be.

  2) GDB is a GNU project and as such would probably use guile as its
     primary extension language.  (Of course, there could be others.)

I haven't looked at your work at all yet.  Do you think it would be
possible to develop an extension language API that could be used by
perl as well as other extension languages?  That way, it'd be possible
to do extension language plugins, of which your work would be one. 
It'd also be possible (and easier) to maintain the code you've written
independent of mainline GDB.

Kevin