What are the prescribed ways to extend gdb? Examples?

[Andrew Cagney]

Thomas Elam wrote:

Just FYI, your e-mail answers your own question -> the assumptions and 
expectations are all correct.  MI has clear traction amongst the various 
IDE developers (EMACS, Eclipse's CDT).

Andrew


> What are the currently prescribed ways to extend
> gdb?  I am interested in adding to gdb: (1) a full
> scripting language (not tcl) or (2) a new GUI front-end.
> These additions could use the same or different
> methods of extending gdb.  I *might* want to link my
> code in with gdb.  I much prefer a machine-oriented
> interface to a human-oriented one.
> 
> I have found the following references about extending gdb:
> 
> [1] Section 4.2 of the `GDB Internals' document,
> `UI-Independent Output--the ui_out Function':
> http://sources.redhat.com/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdbint_4.html#SEC19
> 
> [2] Section 24 of the `Debugging with GDB'
> document, `The GDB/MI Interface':
> http://sources.redhat.com/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb_25.html#SEC223
> This is also described in the part of GDB's info page
> related to the `-interface' option.
> 
> [3] Section A of the `GDB Internals' document, `GDB
> Currently available observers':
> http://sources.redhat.com/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdbint_19.html#SEC188
> 
> It looks like [2] is the way to go for people
> who are not maintainers of gdb.
> 
> Examples?  I've found Insight, but I think it links
> into gdb and is apparently hard to maintain for that
> reason.  As far as I know, most or all of the front-
> ends to gdb open gdb as a separate process and
> parse its human-oriented output, which is not
> ideal, with the exception of an interface written by
> Moses Dejong.  He describes his scripting interface
> to gdb in this paper:
> http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2004/Tcl2003papers/dejong.pdf
> Near the end of the paper, he tells where the
> Tcl source code for the interface can be found:
> http://www.uncounted.org/tcl/gdbmi-0.1.tgz
> It uses version 1 of GDB's MI (machine-oriented)
> interface.  I've tried this Tcl interface with
> the Debian package gdb-6.3-5 .  It seems to work,
> but I have to work with it some more, since I don't
> remember much Tcl.
> 
> Any advice for me?
>