Re: Patch to fix PR9861

[Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>]

TJ Laurenzo writes:
 > >  > I would expect similar behavior from GDB (except that in GDB, the
 > >  > lack of demangling would really complicate things more than the
 > >  > same lack in binutils).  So, my opinion is that GDB is the main
 > >  > problem here, since this patch effectively makes Java debugging
 > >  > very difficult with an unpatched GDB.
 > >
 > > It does.  However, it might be possible to persuade people to ship
 > > updated bnutils on free operating systems.  Unfree systems are going
 > > to be much more problematic, though.

 > I'm not sure we are talking about a hard requirement to update
 > binutils.  The old version works.  There are a few instances that
 > could cause confusion but which could be solved with a FAQ entry
 > that says to upgrade binutils to some version to get more specific
 > error messages (ie.  Unresolved symbols in the output from ld would
 > not pretty-print but would show raw mangled form).

Yeah, I got that.

 > As for GDB, I think it does become non-negotiable to upgrade that
 > in order to get anything but the most rudimentary debugging
 > support.  I have to ask, though, how many people who are using a
 > bleeding-edge version of gcj will be unwilling to update to a new
 > version of GDB?

That's not the case I'm worried about.  I'm worried about making the
change long before an appropriate gdb is released.

 > I would think that it will be some years before non-free OS's (I am
 > specifically thinking of things like the "companion cd" for
 > Solaris) will include GCC 4.1 (or whichever version this patch
 > makes its way into) anyway.

Probably.  But what I don't want to happen is for them to include new
gcc and old gdb.  It's a matter of release cycles.

Andrew.