Re: [patch]: User choice for multiply-defined symbols

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>]

> Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 06:22:59 +0200
> From: Markus Deuling <deuling@de.ibm.com>
> 
> Daniel Jacobowitz schrieb:
> > GDB has done this for years and years.  I guess these are just normal
> > C symbols rather than C++ overloaded symbols, though, so that's the
> > difference?
> > 
> > I'm worried about all the different ways of dealing with lists of
> > symbols.  If we can already ask to set a breakpoint at foo(int) or
> > foo(int, int) why does this code have to be in a separate place?
> > 
> 
> It improves user experience. If there are symbols with the same name (it doesn't care about 
> the signature of a function) in different modules of your application you *can* now ask GDB to let you choose
> which of them to take. Normal operation would be to return the first symbol found.
> 
> Another advantage is, that the user is now able to choose one or more symbols from the list. For example:
> 
> (gdb) break foo
> [0] cancel
> [1] all
> [2] foo at ../../../../src/gdb/testsuite/gdb.base/multiple_symbols_mod.c:5
> [3] foo at ../../../../src/gdb/testsuite/gdb.base/multiple_symbols.c:14 
> [4] foo at ../../../../src/gdb/testsuite/gdb.base/multiple_symbols_two.c:42
> [5] foo at ../../../../src/gdb/testsuite/gdb.base/multiple_symbols_three.c:23
> 
> The user can choose for example symbol 3 and 5 for setting a breakpoint.

Like Daniel, I'm also confused.  Could someone please post a complete
list of GDB features related to setting breakpoints at several places
whose names are similar/identical, with a short summary of when each
one is useful?  I think we should consider all these features at once,
from the user perspective, and I don't see how can we reason about
usability without having a complete picture.

Thanks.