[Bug gdb/11807] New: gdb should default to the system architecture when no binary specified

["slingn at rotateright dot com" <sourceware-bugzilla at sourceware dot org>]

I get the following (unexpected) result if I launch gdb on an x86_64 platform
like Ubuntu 10.04:

$ gdb
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.1-ubuntu
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.
(gdb) p sizeof(long)
$1 = 4
(gdb) quit

This is confusing. I would expect that gdb would default to the architecture of
whatever platform it is run on.

GDB does of course show the right information if I specify a target binary:

slingn@slingn-desktop:~$ gdb ./longtest
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.1-ubuntu
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
Reading symbols from /home/slingn/longtest...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
(gdb) p sizeof(long)
$1 = 8
(gdb) 

The same thing happens with gdb run on the other 64-bit Linux distributions that
I tried: openSUSE 11.2, Fedora 13 and CentOS 5.4.

-- 
           Summary: gdb should default to the system architecture when no
                    binary specified
           Product: gdb
           Version: 7.1
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: gdb
        AssignedTo: unassigned at sourceware dot org
        ReportedBy: slingn at rotateright dot com
                CC: gdb-prs at sourceware dot org


http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11807

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