debugging for egcs

[Mike Simons]

David,

> 	If you are worried about EGCS and GDB, I would suggest that you
> test out the publicly-available gdb-4.17 pre-release snapshots to see if
> any or most of your problems have been addressed.  Hasn't this been
> mentioned on the GDB newsgroups?  The GDB mailinglists now are open and
> served by majordomo as well.

  the only gdb news group I have seen is gnu.gdb.bug, and that has been
*very* dead (6 posts in the last 4 weeks).  The only announcement like thing
I've seen was a post to this list a few weeks back:

Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 09:17:06 -0800
From: Jason Molenda <jsm@cygnus.com>
Subject: Preparing for a GDB 4.17 release

- mentioned the branch was being made for release, 4.16.85 (which was 
  installed on our machines two days after it appeared on the ftp site :).
- mentioned the gdb-patches@cygnus.com list to send any patches we had 
  for gdb.
- mentioned the location of the "current GDB snapshot:
  ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/private/gdb/
- explained how to subscribe to the gdb-testers list.
  there have been four posts in the last four days.

So a few questions...
+ is that the list(s) that you meant?
+ is gdb-4.16.85.tar.gz in /private/gdb the "publicly-available pre-release"?
+ which newsgroups are you referring to?

  Mail from that list tends to get hidden behind the *huge* volume the 
three egcs lists produce... (i have really got to figure out and *use* 
procmail ;)


> The problems are with GDB, not EGCS, so
> there is a limit on what EGCS can/should do to fix it when EGCS is
> producing correct debugging information.

  Yes I realize it's not a fault with EGCS... just got incredibly miffed
with Jeff's answer when I first read it because, I read it like "bugs 
between gdb and egcs???  wow, this is news to us... why don't you give us a 
better list of specifics to that we can try to figure out the problem?"
  (that is not what he said... and not what he meant.)

> GDB moved up its planned release just to address the EGCS bug reports.

  uhmm... are any GNU projects really planned?

  I thought it was GNU policy *not* to announce release dates... by not
announcing they one doesn't need to plan.  How can one "move up" something 
that wasn't scheduled in the first place?  Some utilities have been 
in the 'expecting to release a new version any day now' for years.  =)

  I understand and agree with the reasoning behind not announcing release
dates... people developing reliable software can't predict the unknown.
I just felt like poking fun at the idea one could "move up" something
that no one could expect was ever coming... 

  gdb 4.16 came out in Apr of 1996.
  gcc 2.7.2 came out in Nov of 1995.
  gcc 2.8.0 came out on Jan of 1998.
  
  if history is a good indication of the future we can hope for a gdb 4.17 
sometime in June.  and if it gets "moved up" two months it will be out 
late April!  :P

-- 

    Thanks,
      Mike Simons
      Science Applications International Corporation
      msimons@saic1.com                  703-925-5674

ps: 
  if you didn't follow the GNU mailing lists you might have thought the 
gcc development had stagnated by 1997... two years and no release?!?
  i _am_ ignoring the three patches for 2.7.2...