Re: PATCH to buildsym.c

[Stan Shebs <shebs at cygnus dot com>]

   From: Jim Blandy <jimb@cygnus.com>
   Date: 03 Dec 1999 12:08:13 -0500

   I'm sympathetic to the concerns about possibly breaking other systems,
   but I don't think it's good to put off changes with known benefits
   just because we're not sure whether it might break something, though
   we're not sure what.  It's sort of paralyzing to approach things that
   way.

Generally you want to adjust your risk-taking to the situation.  A
speedup in platform-specific code is almost always safe, a change in
the compiler/debugger interface has more serious consequences.  It's
been a while now, so most people have probably forgotten, but when we
changed some stab values to be assumed to be function-relative rather
than absolute, it took two years for all the aftereffects to settle
out - there were far more stabs readers in the world than we realized!

   I think we should make the change, and comment the code with an
   explanation of why it should be this way.  If it does break something
   else, at least we can make a decision in the presence of data.

Sure, I can go along with that.

   In any case, as the symtab maintainer, I think the change is okay.
   When Stan turns out to be right, and the next Mars Lander mission
   fails because they can't set a breakpoint where they need to, I'll
   throw myself on my sword, okay?

:-) Boy, how must it feel to know your mistake resulted in the loss
of a billion-dollar space probe - death might seem preferable to going
back in to work the next day...

								Stan