Re: 'info os' additions again

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>]

> Date: Tue, 08 May 2012 15:49:30 -0700
> From: Stan Shebs <stanshebs@earthlink.net>
> 
> I tend to favor "info os <type> <subtype>..." because it fits the 
> progressive refinement that is a hallmark of GDB commands - the user can 
> remember it as "info, and it's OS-related, but I just want semaphores".  
> The user doesn't have to consider what OS name might be expected, "os" 
> always works to connect to the class of OS-specific info displays.
> 
> However, we also have an alternate tradition of "info <target> 
> <type>...", including "info dos", "info w32", "info spu", etc.  By that 
> tradition, Linux-specific info should be "info linux", and if there were 
> BSD OS info, it would be "info bsd", and so forth.  It's simpler to 
> document, because the manual can just have a section for each subcommand 
> that enumerates the subsubcommands that are available.  Unfortunately 
> for consistency, we've also had "info os" for several years.

My personal take of this is that (since quite naturally, most of the
new features introduced into GDB are Linux-specific), "info os" will
rapidly become a hodgepodge of Linux-specific commands, with only a
few supported on other platforms.  At that point, "info os" will
simply be a grossly misleading name, confusing to users of other
platforms and hard to describe clearly in the documentation.

FWIW, I never understood the reason why others prefer "info os".

But I seem to be in the minority on this one, as always.