Re: Renaming insight to `insight'

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

Tom Tromey wrote:
> 
> -int use_windows = 1;
> +int use_windows = 0;

> This part of change has gone without public comment so far.  (And
> without any apparent review by the maintainers.)

Heh, I didn't notice it either.

> The idea here is that `gdb' should just be gdb, and if you want the
> GUI you should have to use some other command (eg in this case,
> "insight").
> 
> I personally like this.  That is why I implemented it.  When I use gdb
> from the command line I always use `gdb -nw', which gets annoying
> after a while.

The original theory was that GDB's behavior in this respect ought be
similar to Emacs; if you have a window system available, open up
windows for it, but if you don't have windows, or want to use the
console version, use -nw.  Curiously, although the analogy is
sensible, the behavior seems never to have really caught on for GDB.
(If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that this is because windowed
Emacs tends to be launched once and live in the background, but GDB
tends to be brought up only as needed.)

> Also, I think this patches emphasizes that insight isn't really gdb.
> I think if users type "gdb" then they should get gdb -- not some GUI
> that isn't an official part of the gdb distribution.  I think this
> should happen regardless of how system integrators choose to build gdb
> (for instance, Debian or Red Hat might choose to build insight, to
> offer more features to their uses.  But "gdb" should still be the
> trusty CLI, even though that particular gdb executable happens to have
> the GUI in it).

The official long-term GNU goal is still to have a Guile+Gtk interface
that would be available by default and come up by default.  However,
until this interface exists,  I don't see any problem with turning off
use_windows.  It's only a 1-char change anyway, easy to change back if
desired.

Stan