Re: obsoleting annotate level 2

[Jim Blandy <jimb at redhat dot com>]

Elena Zannoni <ezannoni@redhat.com> writes:
> Bob Rossi writes:
>  > I understand that we will have to support both interfaces to gdb. That
>  > is not the issue at all. The issue is, annotate level 2 and 1 should not
>  > be removed from gdb because existing software relies on them.
>  > 
> 
> I just wanted to state that explicitly, nothing more.
> 
>  > That is why you are leaving annotate level 1, is that correct?
>  > 
> 
> I think annotate 1 is staying because Emacs uses it. However, as I
> understand it, there is the will from the Emacs community to start
> using MI, this is why Andrew is accelerating the merge of the
> interpreter code. Once MI is adopted by Emacs, I don't know what
> happens to annotation.

The plan has been, for a very long time, to remove all annotations.  I
proposed keeping level one annotations.  Here was my rationale:

Level one annotations are implemented by code at two or three points
in GDB.  They're not a big deal to maintain.  And they're what current
releases of Emacs use.

Level two annotations are implemented by (I think) around eighty
different bits of code, scattered throughout GDB.

Thus, while level one annotations are only a small maintenance burden,
level two annotations are.  Even if Emacs had been using level two
annotations for years, we would be trying to get rid of them.