Re: Include GDB/MI docs in GDB manual

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

Dmitry Sivachenko wrote:
> 
> I think it is not good thing to include gdbmi.texinfo into
> GDB manual.  It contains very technical issues, which regular users
> would not be happy to see in the Manual.
> GDB manual should contain things which describe using of the debugger
> from the users's point of view.

You're right that the MI interface is not obviously part of the
regular manual.  But after thinking about it for awhile, considering
the alternatives, and looking at other manuals, it seemed that the
user manual was the best home.

The MI is one of the interfaces presented by GDB.  In that respect
it is similar to annotations, which we also added docs for recently,
and the remote protocol, which has been documented in the manual
for a long time - along with C programming hints for the stub.
The MI is at least as appropriate as these other examples.

The MI audience is narrow, namely people building GUIs that use GDB.
But we also document commands like "target dink32", for which I can
assure you the audience is even narrower!

Multiple manuals are more work to maintain, and historically they
seem to result in more style and sync problems.

The GCC manual actually includes full porting instructions, which
goes well outside being just a user's manual.  However, I've long
wondered if that actually encourages people to start on GCC ports;
certainly when I started working with GCC in 1989, having that
info in the main manual smoothed the way.  One of the underlying
goals for the GNU project is to encourage the creation of more
free software, and so it's a good idea to have programmer-oriented
manuals that encourage and inform programmers about all the avenues
for adding to GNU.

Stan