Re: [cdt-debug-dev] CDT Debug/GDB API change/churn (post 2.0)

["Alain Magloire" <alain@xxxxxxx>]

> 
> > First point:
> >  Should we drop support for gdb-5.2.x and require the CDT/GDB/MI to be
> at least 6.x ?
> 
> We would be opposed to this.  We already get complaints that 5.2.x is
> too stringent a requirement (people want to use even older versions of
> gdb).

We can not go lower than 5.2.1, because of support for GDB/MI level 1 support.

If folks want to send us a nice isolated code/patch to support
gdb-{5.0,4.x, ...} and below via the annoted protocol, I have no problem to include it part
of the CDT/GDB support.

We went with MI because it was the direction "strongly" suggested by the
gdb maintainer/folks as the viable solution.

> I think that allowing people to use new features in 6.x, while
> still supporting 5.2.x would be better.

Some MI commands have buggy behaviour (and been fixed in later release)
but we can not rely on the fixes but rather use the common denominator
(i.e. Command Line(CLI) and add hoc parsing, hacks etc ...)

The line has to be drawn somewhere, for now it is on gdb version 5.2.1
at one point we will have to move it up.

> We could either automatically
> detect the version, or allow the user to select a "compliance" level for
> their debugger.

Only detecting the version is not as easy. For example
"gdb --version" is not standard in term of output, it varies with distributions, i.e.
some sort of mangle date, or whatever.


Anyway no worries for now, we'll see our gdb-6.x evolves.  Or in the future
provide a version for gdb/mi level 1 while the head moves to gdb/mi level 2.