Re: Roadmap beginnings

[Phil Muldoon <pmuldoon at redhat dot com>]

Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 10:33:48AM -0600, Tom Tromey wrote:
>   
> > Thanks in particular for your comments on the particular C++ work
> > items.  

Yes thanks, good to have as much input at possible.

> > I think those combined form a pretty powerful argument.
> > There's still some unaddressed though:
> >
> > * Multi-process.  I've seen some hints on the list that this is
> >   coming, but not enough info to really understand.  This seems like
> >   something that would affect many areas -- there would seem to be
> >   challenges from the CLI on down.
> >     
>
> Yes.  I can say that CodeSourcery is working on this, and I fully
> expect to have an implementation posted by ... say ... mid-October.
> Focus is likely to be on MI, though it will certainly be somehow
> CLI-accessible.  We plan to do the work (or at least the design) in
> public; if anyone wants to help...
>   

Being a definite newbie to GDB, how does the community reconcile the 
multiple and large changes that are being discussed, and implement them 
into a stable release base? To an outsider they all seem to be 
converging at once. I know "move to C++" and "multi-process" are 
orthogonal, but they have to exist in the same working code-base. If the 
C++ stuff happens, and it just so happens this new multi-process 
functionality is introduced, what then? Will C "only" patches be 
discouraged? These questions might be better suited to the the GDB list, 
in fact, but I'm curious with all these changes how they will be managed.

> One thing that might benefit GDB is for someone to sit down and come
> up with a few new-approach-to-debugging features like these.  Stick
> them up on the wiki or something...
>
> A nice thing about new features is that they're shiny, a.k.a. a good
> draw-in for new contributors.
>   
When one implements a new feature that has architecture specific 
components, is it the job of the new feature-implementer to implement 
these for as many architectures as possible? Does he champion the cause 
of other folk to go ahead and contribute for their chosen architecture? 
Or is it more of an approach of: "Here is a new feature, this is the 
architecture I implemented it on, lets review if it can work for others?"

Regards

Phil