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

[Metzger, Markus T]

I’d prefer compact, one-line (error) messages.  A longer explanation can go into the manual or in the help text.  E.g.

    Stopping replaying at end of execution history

and

    Stopping at beginning of execution history

Markus.

From: Alex Chronopoulos <achronop@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2024 7:17 PM
To: gdb-patches@sourceware.org
Cc: Pedro Alves <pedro@palves.net>; Metzger, Markus T <markus.t.metzger@intel.com>; Guinevere Larsen <blarsen@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] Change message when reaching end of reverse history.


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<mailto: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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