Re: Technical criteria for retaining symbol readers

[Jim Blandy <jimb at redhat dot com>]

Andrew Cagney <cagney@gnu.org> writes:
> I'd like to see us establish clear technical criteria against which
> symtab readers are measured.  Those that don't meet the criteria, either
> being fixed or removed.
> 
> As an example, should it be a requirement that all symbol-readers use
> the build-symtab framework?

That would be good.

I'd also like to have some kind of requirement for testability.  For
example, I have no way (that I know of) to evaluate changes to
nlmread.c, but that shouldn't mean that I mustn't change anything it
depends on.  Perhaps we should require that, in order to be retained,
symbol readers have a contact person who can give GDB developers
access to a machine that actually uses that format.  (A complete sim
toolchain being available would be an easy way to satisfy this
requirement.)