Re: C++ draft

[Yao Qi <qiyaoltc at gmail dot com>]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 4:05 AM, Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com> wrote:
> Yao> In your concrete plan, IIUC, your plan is about converting GDB to C++
> Yao> *partially*, instead of re-write GDB *completely*. ?Is that
> Yao> correct?
>
> Yes. ?I don't think a complete rewrite is either practical or advisable.
> Instead I think an incremental approach is best.
>

Tom,
Thanks for your clarification.

I agree.

> Now, one possible criticism is that such incremental changes often peter
> out. ?And this is definitely a possible problem -- after exceptions and
> python reference counting, what do we care enough about to transform? ?I
> mean, it is easy to think of areas that can be C++-ified, but are the
> benefits enough to justify the work? ?Would we be better off just
> writing GCC plugins to check our changes? ?I tend to think the benefits
> are worth the cost, but it is hard to know this with any certainty.
>

I agree that it is hard to say which part should be first C++-ified,
or C++-ified easily.  When the first step (python reference counting
and exception) is done, we may have a clear view of which part should
be C++-ified.

> Yao> I don't think C and C++ co-existance is a problem, or, your plan is
> Yao> about "make good use of C++ to replace some bad and error-prone stuffs
> Yao> in GDB, and keep the rest of GDB as it is". ?Is it right?
>
> Yes.

That is good to me.

>
> Yao> Just want to know clearly what GDB will be after your plan is performed.
>
> I think we will always have parts in C. ?At the very least BFD, and if
> you push forward on the gdbserver library project, then the shared bits
> there as well.

Right, that is the reason I ask do we plan to move GDBServer to C++.
This makes sense to me.

-- 
Yao Qi