Re: [discuss] Support for reverse-execution

[Russell Shaw <rjshaw at netspace dot net dot au>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Sat, 21 May 2005 20:30:16 +1000
> > From: Russell Shaw <rjshaw@netspace.net.au>
> > Cc: gdb@sources.redhat.com
> >
> > It'd be better to store the state of every step in to a circular buffer
> > of size 1000 (the user could change that size with a command).
>
> When you say ``it'd be better'', what is the alternative that you
> think is worse than your suggestion?  What I wrote didn't say how many
> previous states to remember, nor what data structure to use for that.
>
> Also, I hope you don't mean ``every step'', but rather ``every stop''.
> What I suggested didn't involve single-stepping the program, so GDB
> can only collect the target state when the target stops, not after
> each instruction.

Yes, that's what i meant (every step). It could be configureable so
that the policy can be set to every user-stop, every function call,
or disabled alltogether. The idea is that you could run from main()
until a segfault happens, then "back 10" and step thru the last few
actions.

> > That way, there's only one backwards command to remember, and maybe a
> > command to change the history buffer size.
>
> That's essentially what I suggested: to have a single command to go
> back to one of the places where we have enough information to restore
> the target state.

I was hoping to have target state for all of the last 100 or 1000 steps.