Re: GDB in C++

[Thiago Jung Bauermann <bauerman at br dot ibm dot com>]

On Wed, 2007-07-11 at 19:24 -0700, Michael Eager wrote:
> Thiago Jung Bauermann wrote:
> > If GDB Internal's contents was transferred to the GDB wiki, maybe people
> > would feel more compelled to update and expand it. I know I would try to
> > contribute to it as I learn new stuff. The downside when comparing to
> > patches against the existing documentation sources would be that peer
> > review would be a bit more awkward (but there are ways around it).
> 
> The problems with the GDB documentation are not whether it lives
> in a .texi file or in a .html file.  The problem is in the content.

It seems most people here don't see much of an advantadge in moving docs
to the wiki. That's fine for me, I don't have a strong opinion about
that. As you say, the main problem is that the documentation is not
being given much priority.

> There are two related fixes for this problem.  (Possibly three,
> with the first one being recognition that there is a problem.)
> 
> 1)  The knowledge that the experienced GDB developers have about the
>      program needs to be added to the documentation.  This can either be
>      by them writing the docs or by them working with a less experienced
>      developer who writes the docs.  (You might remember that I offered
>      to be the latter a short while ago, but I got no takers.)
> 
> 2)  The recognition that some of the problems with the documentation
>      stem from the fact that GDB is complex, cryptic, unclear and
>      convoluted.  There are a number of ways to address this with
>      significant refactoring of the code into separate modules with
>      well defined interfaces being one, as well as my previous
>      suggestion to convert to using real object oriented code instead
>      of awkwardly trying to simulate it.

I think this thread is important because it brings forward the issue
that there is a barrier for new folks who would like to contribute code
to the GDB project. I think that both of the fixes you mention above
should be implemented. Regarding point 2: GDB is such an old project,
and because of this there's a lot of cruft which is not easily
identifiable by those who are not familiar with the code or the historic
issues behind it. (that's why I mentioned "pitfalls" in my earlier
e-mail).

I hope we can get to some conclusion regarding this. Even if it is that
the interested parties (me, for instance) should just send patches to
the internals texinfo file.
-- 
[]'s
Thiago Jung Bauermann
Software Engineer
IBM Linux Technology Center