Re: GDB 8.1 branching 2017-12-04 update

[Pedro Alves <palves at redhat dot com>]

On 12/04/2017 05:02 PM, Joel Brobecker wrote:
>> One thing that I was thinking it'd be nice to see about getting
>> into 8.1 was the DWARF5 index stuff (standard replacement for 
>> .gdb_index):
>>
>>  https://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2017-05/msg00577.html
>>
>> Not sure about making that the default (seems risky), but it
>> might be nice to provide the option so that users/distros can
>> start experimenting (and so that Fedora/RHEL doesn't end up
>> having to backport yet another large series... :-P) .  I tried
>> to review that in the past but stumbled  on choices I didn't quite
>> understand, and there are also some open questions, but I was
>> planning on taking another look.  I can't really promise I/we can
>> get it done this week, so not sure about blocking the branching
>> because of it.
> 
> Indeed, it would be nice, and we can wait a bit to see if we manage
> to get it in. But looking at the size of the patch, unless you think
> it's almost ready and it's only a matter of a few fixes here and
> there, it seems like this might be a bit risky...
> 

I've played around with that series for a few days (on and off...),
and I've now pushed it in, with an important change that eliminates
most of the risk, IMO -- the original series made GDB default
to the new index format, while I left .gdb_index the default.
This should allow users/distros experimenting, and hopefully
any follow up fixes should be small/contained and easy to backport.

> Let's give ourselves this week, and see where we get. In the meantime,
> I've added this to the "maybe" section, before 18.1 branching.

Thanks,
Pedro Alves