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[RFC] "actionpoints"?
- From: Stan Shebs <stan at codesourcery dot com>
- To: gdb at sourceware dot org
- Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:22:35 -0800
- Subject: [RFC] "actionpoints"?
One of the issues that has come up regularly in our tracepoint work is
what GDB's messages to the user should say when they are referring to
various combinations of tracepoints and breakpoints. We haven't dealt
with it consistently so far, sometimes writing code to specifically say
"tracepoint" when all the objects are tracepoints, sometimes saying "or"
with several types, and sometimes relying on GDB's overloading of
"breakpoint" to mean both stopping places and anything that uses the
breakpoint.c infrastructure.
Although we've been doing the overloading for a long time, it's really
abusing our terminology, and has to be confusing to users.
It turns out there is a generic term available - "actionpoint". It
originally comes from TotalView I think, and was adopted into the HPD
(high performance debugger) spec back in the 90s.
A plus is that the term is sufficiently vague that it is sensible for
watchpoints, catchpoints, tracepoints, breakpoints, and the rest of the
menagerie, including future ideas we haven't thought of yet. A minus is
that it means having to teach an unfamiliar term to users, and it
entails a certain amount of hacking up the manual.
There is also the risk that some (and you know who you are :-) ) will
feel an overwhelming urge to rename source code to actionpoint.c, struct
actionpoint, etc, which I *don't* want to do - it's a lot of busywork
that doesn't directly help the user. Right now I just want to think
about how to give good feedback to users; should we introduce a new
term, continue using "breakpoint", concoct phrases with "/" and "or", or
do something else entirely?
Stan