[PATCH v3] Change message when reaching end of reverse history.

[Alex Chronopoulos]

Thank you, Pedro. No worries, it's still early enough :)

I like your suggestions and would happily follow them. I believe they are
clear and leave fewer questions for the user.

I also prefer the extended version for the backward case. However, I don't
want to make the final call. I'll wait for others to comment, and I'll
update the patch when we have the final version.


On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 10:36 PM Pedro Alves <pedro@palves.net> wrote:

> Sorry for not chiming in earlier...
>
> On 2024-04-14 20:36, Alex Chronopoulos wrote:
> > In a record session, when we move backward, GDB switches from normal
> > execution to simulation. Moving forward again, the emulation continues
> > until the end of the reverse history. When the end is reached, the
> > execution stops, and a warning message is shown. This message has been
> > modified to indicate that the forward emulation has reached the end, but
> > the execution can continue as normal, and the recording will also
> continue.
> >
> > Before this patch, the warning message shown in that case was the same as
> > in the reverse case. This meant that when the end of history was reached
> in
> > either backward or forward emulation, the same message was displayed:
> >
> > "No more reverse-execution history."
> >
> > This message remains for backward emulation. However, in forward
> emulation,
> > it has been modified to:
> >
> > "End of recorded history; following steps will be added to history."
> >
>
> IMO, "steps" here is confusing.  It's ambiguous with stepping.  Like as if
> you're saying that the following "step" commands will be added to history.
> "But what about if I continue??"
>
> It also isn't true that "following steps will be added to history.".  If
> the user does "reverse-continue" for example, they won't, they're
> already there...
>
> The following tweak would be more accurate and not have that "step"
> confusion, IMO:
>
>  "End of recorded history; following forward execution will be added to
> history."
>
> and it's still under 80 chars.
>
> Except it fells a bit awkward, for not stating that we're stopping before
> talking about following execution.  This would be clearer to me:
>
>   Reached end of recorded history; stopping.
>   Following forward execution will be added to history.
>
>
> Also, with the patch, we have these two messages, for the forward case:
>
>  End of recorded history; following steps will be added to history.
>
> and for the reverse case:
>
>  No more reverse-execution history.
>
> I read the v1/v2 discussions, and I have to say that I don't understand how
> the potential user confusion that led to changing the "No more
> reverse-execution"
> wording in the forward case doesn't apply to the reverse case...  I think
> we should be consistent.
>
> With my suggestion above, we could have:
>
> forward:
>
>   Reached end of recorded history; stopping.
>   Following forward execution will be added to history.
>
> backward:
>
>   Reached end of recorded history; stopping.
>
> or, backward:
>
>   Reached end of recorded history; stopping.
>   Backward execution from here not possible.
>
>
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