obsoleting the annotate level 2 interface
Andrew Cagney
ac131313@redhat.com
Tue Jan 21 16:15:00 GMT 2003
> GDB seems to support two different ways of doing detailed annotations
> of its output for consumption by other programs: MI and 'set annotate
> 2'. I don't think annotation level 2 has many active users, if any at
> all. It pervades GDB's code. Would it make sense to put 'set
> annotate 2' on the path to obsolescence?
Hmm, yes! Dead code elimination is always good.
Removing the annotate stuff was always part of MI's long term agenda.
> Some background: the 'set annotate' command sets the
> 'annotation_level' variable. There are only three distinguished
> values for this variable:
Can you perhaps do a little more research into the history of this
feature? For instance, was this initially part of some now abandoned
project, or was this just `a good idea at the time'? What of the other
potential clients (DDD, ...)? This helps strengthen the non-technical
rationale for this user interface change.
As for implementing this, the first step is pretty easy, just tweak
"main.c" to print a warning when level 2 is selected. (Like the
`deprecate mechanism we've got for commands'.)
> Personally, I'd like to see Emacs switch from annotation level 1 to
> MI, too; then we could get rid of annotation altogether. But I think
> it makes sense to tackle level 2 first, since I don't think it has
> many users (if any).
Yes. RMS has previously inidicated his liking of the idea of having
EMACS use MI. The lack of a console was identified as a technical
barrier to that change :-/
Andrew
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