Re: [PATCH 0/7] more constification

[Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat dot com>]

Tom> Patch #6 casts away const in a couple spots.  There's a justification
Tom> in the patch; but I also wanted to add that the casts only affect
Tom> mdebugread.c, which can't really be said to be actively maintained in
Tom> any case.

Joel> I am wondering whether we should consider the option of deprecating
Joel> those targets that use this code. This affects alpha-tru64 and
Joel> maybe mips-linux (although - is that option still supported by
Joel> GCC? And even if it was, who would want to use that object format
Joel> instead of ELF???). It's also said to be used by some versions
Joel> of IRIX, but I am not sure that GDB works on those - the ones
Joel> we've been supporting until a few years ago were using ELF.

There was this thread:

    https://www.sourceware.org/ml/gdb/2012-12/msg00052.html

I somewhat recall looking into removing some of this code (I don't
remember if it was mdebugread or something else) and finding to my
dismay that it was intertwined with other somewhat more living code in a
way that made it hard to untangle.  I thought I sent a note about this,
but I can't find it now.

I'm generally in favor of removing things.  gdb has too much moribund
code.  However it's not always easy to tell what is really dying, and
one is less likely to get complaints about a patch than a removal.
Perhaps at some point we can say it is either definitively dead or
definitively broken (like the solib-sunos stuff last year) and then
remove it.

Tom