Time for turning off gdb by default? Or worse...

[Julian Elischer]

On 4/11/14, 5:02 AM, John Baldwin wrote:
> On Thursday, April 10, 2014 4:37:17 pm Warner Losh wrote:
>> OK. Here’s the summary of the thread:
>>
>> (1) gdb in tree is ancient
>> (2) kgdb is quite useful, and only in tree
>> (3) ports gdb rocks, but…
>> (4) ports gdb exists only for a few architectures
>> (5) Fixing ptrace will allow us to use a more-stock gdb
>>
>> Action items:
>>
>> (1) Create a wiki page with timeline to deactivation and removal.
>> (2) Create milestones along the path for
>>       (a) kgdb + devel/gdb*
>>       (b) architectural coverage
>>       (c) ptrace fixes
> I would actually invert these.  I think (c) is the simplest to do
> (in regards to the thread changes I mentioned) and I think it makes (b)
> a lot easier to do.
>
>> (3) profit.
> Otherwise, sounds good to me.
>
>> I’ve done these steps and documented them at https://wiki.freebsd.org/GdbRetirement to allow work to progress (or not) without repeating this discussion. Thanks
> for everybody’s feedback. Feel free to comment on the wiki page or edit it for missing items (or testing you’ve done).
>> At this point, I’m withdrawing the gdb disabled by default patches.
> So one thing we kicked around on IRC is that I think it would be nice
> to have some sort of place to collaborate on maintaining useful GPLv3
> toolchain bits.  I don't think they belong in the main tree.  However,
> it might be nice to someday have another SVN repo that can be overlaid
> into an existing src checkout (maybe using SVN external references?)
> to allow GPLv3 gdb, etc. to be built as part of a world build.
>
> I don't know that we need an SVN repo on a FreeBSD.org machine right now,
> but something would be nice.
I have for some time, actively promoted the idea of "base ports vs 
regular ports"
where base ports are not in the tree as such, but we maintain the port 
as part of the project, and a failure to build a base port is as much 
a reason to "stop ship" as failure to compile something in the tree..