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Re: Huge slowdown since 6.0
> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 13:45:40 -0500
> From: Andrew Cagney <cagney@gnu.org>
>
> If we knew for instance that only 10% of users set breakpoints outside
> of the main executible, then we'd also know that we were frustrating 90%
> of users by making them sit around waiting for needless symbol table
> reads :-(
I think we can say we know this already. I'm quite sure that the
number of users who set breakpoints outside their program's code is
miniscule, much less than 10%.
> On the other hand, if we knew that the first thing people did was:
> (gdb) break <tab>
> we'd have an entirely different problem.
I think "break TAB" is very rare. But "info address", "info symbol",
and their ilk might be much more popular. However, it is IMHO
entirely reasonable to load the full symbol table when such commands
are issued. I'd even print a message, something like
Loading symbols for your_monster_proggy; this could take a while..."