Towards multiprocess GDB

[Stan Shebs]

Pedro Alves wrote:
> A Friday 18 July 2008 23:27:58, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>   
>> I'm not sure it's going to be that big of a change actually. Once
>> behavior has been directed to the right objects internally, they will do
>> what they're doing now. Most symbol handling is objfile-relative for
>> instance, adding a new set of objfiles for a different exec isn't going
>> to affect that code.
>>     
>
> You seem to be thinking of the symbol handling code only.
>
> The thing I see requiring architecting, is the target stack.
>   
You make very good points about the target stack. As I understand it, 
the immediate project is merely to support multiple programs all using 
the same target, so I've been concentrating on the symbol side. But 
you're right, I think we do want the target objects to be per-program.

This connects to another longstanding wishlist item, which is to change 
target stacking to be more procedural, and less literally stacklike. 
With multiple programs, and inferiors scattered around the net, the 
target "stack" starts looking more forest-like, and it seems like it 
might be simpler to construct target objects as compositions of target 
descriptions, with the stack being more like the composition procedure 
than a literal stack.

Thinking about it from the user point of view, I wonder if we need to 
merge the "target", "run", and "attach" commands into some kind of 
super-command that amounts to "get all the inferiors ready to debug", so 
that the old commands are all special cases.

Stan