Re: Current Status of Insight

[Steven Johnson <sjohnson at sakuraindustries dot com>]

It seems that there is at least 6 people that care:

(in no particular order, and sorry if i list you and you dont really care)

1. Keith Seitz
2. Duane Ellis
3. Roland Schwingel
4. Paul Schlie
5. Christopher Faylor
6. Steven Johnson (me)
And Maybe (although it is less than clear from their posts):
7. Nickolay Kolchin
8. Jon Beniston

Anybody else care to add their name to this list of people that care 
about, or at the very least use a version of insight and would like to 
see it continue in some form.

If we cant join em (FSF GDB and RH Insight) why dont we just fork em?

We could go to Sourceforge, do a checkout of insight CVS Head, move 
development over to there, and at least then it can progress, we can cut 
releases, etc.  Official insight can stay here, and do whatever its 
going to.  If the FSF and RH ever feel like getting together on this 
they can, and we could merge back our changes.

We track official GDB (ie merge GDB CVS with our tree daily), and 
release (close to synch with it), but are really independent from it. 

To the extent anyone cares, insight would continue to be (visibly) 
maintained and survive.  If people really stopped caring it would die, 
at least we could attempt to attract new users (1 or 2 of which might 
even contribute something useful), as there would be "stable" releases, 
synched to official GDB the attraction would be greater.  It does seem 
like most of the people that care are using it for embedded programming, 
a few (maybe most) want it to work under windows. (I use it under 
Linux).  In the mean time, we would have a maintainable version.

CVS_Head of Insight, is that the same level of code as CVS_Head of GDB? 
(ie, does it incorporate CVS_Head of GDB?)

As a minimum all that needs to happen is ensure that Insight continues 
to build and function on top of current GDB.  And I think thats what 
Keith is basically saying he does with CVS_Head, keep it building and 
functional against CVS_Head of GDB, all im really proposing (as a 
minimum) is making the process a little more transparent, and cutting 
releases (maybe its more work than that? Keith?).

Anyway is this feasible, of interest, or a waste of time?

There are a lot of nify features a debugger targeted to embedded systems 
could have, and insight could have them reasonably easily.  We could 
even start re-writing the portions that are Red Hat copyright, over 
time, if we felt like it.  Any new code, could be put in new files and 
assigned to the FSF, over time (maybe years) id suspect the RH code 
would eventually disappear and it would all be assigned to the FSF.

The first thing to do, i would see is create a new project on 
sourceforge, move the code over there, and cut a first (current) 
version.  Even if it isnt quite GDB 6.3, we could call it "insight 6.3D" 
or some such (D for development release).  BTW, is "insight" a RH 
trademark, would it need to be renamed.  I always fancied "oversight" 
:)  Any new code, could be put in new files and assigned to the FSF. 
over time (maybe years) id suspect the RH code would eventually 
disappear and it would all be assigned to the FSF.

If this is something ive generated interest with (with others), I will 
even invest in some web space for the project, so it can have its own 
URL (at least for a year or two, depending on its life, and my continued 
ability to fund it).

Keith, you seem to be the primary maintainer of insight, i dont want to 
mess with your project here, so your comments are of significant 
interest to me, in this regard.  I wouldnt like to see more "code 
hostility" if forking is feasible, then we should do it in a 
constructive way, for the benefit of all users, just to get rid of some 
of the restrictions the code base currently seems to face.

Also, i realise that i seem to have jumped in here and stirred things 
up, i have been an insight user for a long time, have submitted various 
things in the past (cheers go out to Fernando Nasser if hes listening).  
Its not my intention.  But if there are a lot of people building insight 
from CVS_Head and then using it for real work, then i thnk it should be 
kept going in a visible way, otherwise people will think what i thought 
"insight is dead, boo hoo, how crappy", when instead it is really just 
bubbling along under the surface, not progressing in great leaps and 
bounds, but still breathing.

Steven Johnson

Keith Seitz wrote:

> On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 22:09 -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>  
>
> > I think past and current employees of Red Hat would probably agree with
> > you about this sorry state of affairs.
> >
> > Keith, what about a petition to Red Hat?  Think that would work?
> >    
>
> I have no idea. For all I know, it might get me fired! [Okay, I don't
> actually think it would, but who the heck knows?] I've thought about
> this and other things.
>
> I know this looks very badly upon Red Hat, but I want to make it
> absolutely clear: I don't blame them one darn bit for not wanting to
> take the time (and money) to see all the paperwork done. It does not
> make economic sense.
>
> I would also like to emphasize that when it comes to programming tools
> (compilers, debuggers, etc), Red Hat is not a company, IME, that is all
> take an no give. I've been involved with several projects where Red Hat
> took AND gave back to the community.
>
> Once again, I think we're finally at the point where we must ask
> ourselves: Does it matter to anyone?*
>
> Keith
>
> * A question I have been meaning to ask for almost two years, but kept
> chickening out in the last second...
>
>
>