Retiring in-tree GDB

[Ian Lepore]

On Tue, 2015-10-20 at 14:25 -0700, Bryan Drewery wrote:
> On 10/20/2015 1:36 PM, John Baldwin wrote:
> > However, I would like to propose that we retire the in-tree GDB for
> > some of
> > our platforms (namely x86) for 11.  In particular, I think we
> > should default
> 
> Disabling/removing gdb. Definitely. It is unusable in many cases and
> the
> working gdb is just a 'pkg install' away.
> 
> > to enabling lldb and disabling gdb for platforms that meet the
> > following
> 
> Why should we include lldb in the base system? It is not needed to
> build
> or use the system and we can easily provide one from packages.
> 
> Arguments about providing a default working system don't work here
> for
> me as we don't provide perl, python, valgrind, vim, emacs, X11, etc. 
>  We
> can provide lldb and gdb on the default DVD though.
> 
> If we are actually going to "package base" in 11, we should not be
> adding new things into base that can easily live in ports. Yes, I
> know
> lldb is already there but I don't think it should be.
> 
> Can the same be said for tools such as truss, ktrace or nvi? Sure.
> The
> discussion is really "what packages should be installed by default".
> The answer should be "what all, or most, users _need_" Do most users
> need a debugger? I don't think so.
> 
> > criteria:
> > 
> > 1) devel/gdb works including thread and kgdb support
> > 2) lldb works

This just-won't-die meme that a "functional system" is nothing more
than a bare kernel and an init binary and everything else comes from
ports is extra-scary when you consider that ports can't even be (cross
-)built for some architectures.

It sucks that the project is adopting the mindset that the only way to
compete with linux is to become linux.  (And it sucks that installing a
truly functional system will require end users to have roughly the same
knowledge as the team that assembles a linux distro.)

-- Ian