Re: Guile and GDB

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Neil,

Neil Jerram <address@hidden> writes:

> address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>
>> Actually, it's also meant to be used directly by GDB.  Normally, GDB
>> should try to display SCM values on its own (using its own copy of
>> `tags.h' and the corresponding printing procedures) and resort to
>> calling `gdb_print ()' when it doesn't know how to display a value.
>>
>> In practice, GDB currently only supports the latter, which makes it
>> not-so-useful (the same result can be achieved with trivial GDB macros).
>> See http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2007-07/msg00231.html .
>
> Wow, that's pretty cool!  So your patches are actually in GDB now, are
> they?

Yes, but as I said, they're not too useful as it stands.

> Notwithstanding, it looks like my conclusion that we don't need
> GDB_INTERFACE and GDB_INTERFACE_INIT in guile.c is still correct - can
> you confirm that?

I think so.

> (In other words, instead of using some kind of registration API, I
> guess that GDB either links to libguile, or looks up the gdb_*
> functions that it needs dynamically, or has an independent copy of the
> libguile code that it needs to do printing.  Is that right?)

Currently, it just calls `gdb_print ()' et al. in the inferior process.
Eventually, it should use its own printers, so that it can work without
interfering the process being debugged, work on core files, etc.

Thanks,
Ludo'.