Re: [patch] fix for infinite recursion in lookup_symbol

[Jim Ingham <jingham at apple dot com>]

Daniel,

I am not ragging on you specifically, but it is very very lame (almost 
warranting the epithet "egregiously heinous") that a crashing bug has 
sat around in the gdb sources for three months or so - with a KNOWN 
fix!  Particularly one that is triggered by simple actions like trying 
to print instance data in only moderately complicated C++ objects.

I understand that there is some argument over whether the current 
implementation of C++ symbol lookup is the right one, but while it is in 
place, simple fixes to it need to get into the sources quickly.  It is 
not sufficient to say that the crash was reported in this forum - 
Fernando didn't make the connection either, and he is no slouch to say 
the least...  And most gdb users don't read gdb patches.

Just like no user error, no matter how stupid, should ever result in a 
crash, no patch that keeps gdb from crashing should be refused unless 
the maintainer can come up with another solution quickly.  It is one 
thing if gdb doesn't find a symbol, or reports some data wrong.  That is 
bad, but there is leisure to argue over method, since users can 
generally work around it and still get their job done.  If gdb crashes - 
particularly on a common code path, then users are just stuck...

If it is really the case that this patch is waiting on Jim's approval, 
do we need to have a "fast track crash prevention approval mechanism" in 
the Maintainer system for gdb?

This sort of thing makes gdb look really bad.

Jim

On Friday, January 12, 2001, at 05:52 PM, Daniel Berlin wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, 12 Jan 2001, Jim Ingham wrote:
>
>> Daniel,
>>
>> Well, while you are waiting, it might be nice to check in fixes for 
>> some
>> of these, since they are pretty simple fixes, and the bugs are pretty
>> annoying (in this case it causes gdb to crash, and people tend to 
>> REALLY
>> hate it when their debugger crashes).
>
> I can't without approval from Jim anyway. I'm still waiting for approval
> for some simple changes I submitted a few weeks ago to be approved as
> well, i don't want to juggle that many outstanding patches.
>
>> It wasted a couple of days of my
>> time chasing it down, and apparently a couple of days of Fernando's 
>> time
>> as well.
> Sorry to hear that. If you look back, ti was reported in either november
> or december, and a huge discussion ensued.
> Wish there was something more I could do, but it's not my area of
> maintenance, so all I can do is submit patches.
>
>