Re: MI testsuite to use PTY for inferior

[Bob Rossi <bob at brasko dot net>]

On Mon, Aug 01, 2005 at 06:56:28AM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:20:21 -0400
> > From: Bob Rossi <bob@brasko.net>
> > 
> > What is GDB's stance on supporting target's via GDB/MI that can not support
> > creating TTY's? Off the top of my head, I don't think it makes sense to
> > support these targets.
> 
> Please don't jump to such far-fetched conclusions.  The fact that some
> obscure feature is not available on some platform does not mean GDB
> should drop support for that platform.  I would object to removing
> support for any platform on such feeble grounds.

Hi Eli,

I am claiming that a reliable FE can not be written if the inferior writes 
data to the same output stream as GDB/MI's output stream. So, on native 
windows, if the inferior I/O and GDB/MI I/O can not be separated, it 
wouldn't be worth while to write an FE on that platform.

Nick, does Emacs port natively to windows? Does GDB/MI work reliably for
you there?

Currently, native windows can not use the already crucial feature of the
PTY for separating inferior I/O and GDB/MI I/O. The precedent has
already been set. I don't think GDB should stop the use of PTY's in any
feature of MI in order to improve itself because some platform's don't
support the feature.

With that said, I don't think GDB should "drop support" for native 
windows either. I just think it's OK to use PTY's and assume platforms
that don't support it are kind of screwed.

Are there any other routes to go down here? Should we have an
alternative mode where GDB reads the output of the inferior and writes
it to a named pipe? or simply writes it encoded in the MI output stream?
This functionality could work in both UNIX/windows. However, it wouldn't
give terminal semantics.

Thanks,
Bob Rossi