Re: [RFA] Remove --disable-gdbcli and --disable-gdbmi

[Pedro Alves <palves at redhat dot com>]

On 06/28/2018 06:21 PM, Tom Tromey wrote:
> I think it doesn't really make sense to allow building gdb without the
> CLI or without MI.  Perhaps at one time this was a goal, but libgdb is
> long gone, the CLI is intrinsic to gdb, and MI is relied on by many
> GUIs.
> 
> So, this patch removes the implementation of these configure options.
> They are still recognized (this is autoconf's default), but do
> nothing.
> 
> This simplifies configure.ac and Makefile.in a bit.
> 
> Tested by rebuilding.

I think it's safe to say that most MI frontends end up relying
on CLI commands, e.g., because they allow setting breakpoint commands
or expose a command line widget, or because of gdb/Python scripts.
While it's conceivable that someone might want to drive gdb via
MI for some targeted use case that does not rely or want a CLI might
make sense, it seems unlikely to me.  In any
case, --disable-gdbcli doesn't really work, so nobody is
going to miss it.

OTOH, wanting to disable the MI seems a bit more likely, at least
plausible.  Doing a web search for "--disable-gdbmi" finds
<https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2008-01/msg00866.html>,
someone doing just that.  That was 10 years ago, and there doesn't seem to
be many more examples though, at least in the public.  It doesn't look
like removing --disable-gdbmi simplifies that much, so I'd be inclined
to keep it, since it actually works.

Do you have further plans of simplifications in this area that
this patch would enable, or was this just something you happened
to run into?

Thanks,
Pedro Alves