Re: Query regarding GDB-Mi interface

[Nick Roberts <nickrob at snap dot net dot nz>]

 > We have a debugging front end which uses gdb-6.6 We were using 
 > annotations till now but
 >  as annotations have been made obsolete we are shifting to MI 
 > interpreter. I have a few queries regarding MI.
 > 
 > 1) Why few commands are still un implemented like attach, info program 
 > etc. Is there any plan to support them.

I think the plan is only to implement commands as they are needed.  Probably
many of the commands listed in the MI section don't need to be implemented.

 >  2) Is there any way to stop the MI interpreter like we have with 
 > annotations (set annotate 0 whenever we wish to do so).

No.  Annotations just markup the output and are easy to turn off.  MI uses
a different interpreter, which is a more fundamental change and allows
a different set of input commands.

Apple GDB, however, does allow switching of interpreters, e.g MI to CLI
(normal output) and it may be useful for FSF GDB to do this too.

 >  3) We need 'info line *addr' command when we are shifting to MI from 
 > annotations. I have been doing few changes in
 >       the gdb source code to get this information (source file and line 
 > number), however annotations have this information.
 >       I would like to know is there any known issue due to which this 
 > command has not been implemented.

MI will accept CLI commands but you need to parse the output, e.g.,

info line
&"info line\n"
~"Line 146 of \"myprog.c\" starts at address 0x80486e9 <main>\n"
~"   and ends at 0x8048706 <main+29>.\n"
^done
(gdb) 

However, it doen't print the annotation that "info line" generates with
annotations if you need that.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob