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Re: obsoleting the annotate level 2 interface
- From: Andrew Cagney <ac131313 at redhat dot com>
- To: Jim Blandy <jimb at redhat dot com>
- Cc: gdb at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 11:15:01 -0500
- Subject: Re: obsoleting the annotate level 2 interface
- References: <vt265sjj6vi.fsf@zenia.red-bean.com>
GDB seems to support two different ways of doing detailed annotations
of its output for consumption by other programs: MI and 'set annotate
2'. I don't think annotation level 2 has many active users, if any at
all. It pervades GDB's code. Would it make sense to put 'set
annotate 2' on the path to obsolescence?
Hmm, yes! Dead code elimination is always good.
Removing the annotate stuff was always part of MI's long term agenda.
Some background: the 'set annotate' command sets the
'annotation_level' variable. There are only three distinguished
values for this variable:
Can you perhaps do a little more research into the history of this
feature? For instance, was this initially part of some now abandoned
project, or was this just `a good idea at the time'? What of the other
potential clients (DDD, ...)? This helps strengthen the non-technical
rationale for this user interface change.
As for implementing this, the first step is pretty easy, just tweak
"main.c" to print a warning when level 2 is selected. (Like the
`deprecate mechanism we've got for commands'.)
Personally, I'd like to see Emacs switch from annotation level 1 to
MI, too; then we could get rid of annotation altogether. But I think
it makes sense to tackle level 2 first, since I don't think it has
many users (if any).
Yes. RMS has previously inidicated his liking of the idea of having
EMACS use MI. The lack of a console was identified as a technical
barrier to that change :-/
Andrew