Info Catalog gdb: GDB/MI Compatibility with CLI gdb: GDB/MI gdb: GDB/MI Output Records

gdb: GDB/MI Development and Front Ends

 
 27.4 GDB/MI Development and Front Ends
 ======================================
 
 The application which takes the MI output and presents the state of the
 program being debugged to the user is called a "front end".
 
    Since GDB/MI is used by a variety of front ends to GDB, changes to
 the MI interface may break existing usage.  This section describes how
 the protocol changes and how to request previous version of the protocol
 when it does.
 
    Some changes in MI need not break a carefully designed front end, and
 for these the MI version will remain unchanged.  The following is a list
 of changes that may occur within one level, so front ends should parse
 MI output in a way that can handle them:
 
    * New MI commands may be added.
 
    * New fields may be added to the output of any MI command.
 
    * The range of values for fields with specified values, e.g.,
      'in_scope' (-var-update) may be extended.
 
    If the changes are likely to break front ends, the MI version level
 will be increased by one.  The new versions of the MI protocol are not
 compatible with the old versions.  Old versions of MI remain available,
 allowing front ends to keep using them until they are modified to use
 the latest MI version.
 
    Since '--interpreter=mi' always points to the latest MI version, it
 is recommended that front ends request a specific version of MI when
 launching GDB (e.g.  '--interpreter=mi2') to make sure they get an
 interpreter with the MI version they expect.
 
    The following table gives a summary of the the released versions of
 the MI interface: the version number, the version of GDB in which it
 first appeared and the breaking changes compared to the previous
 version.
 
 MI   GDB  Breaking changes
 versionversion
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1    5.1  None
           
 2    6.0  
              * The '-environment-pwd', '-environment-directory' and
                '-environment-path' commands now returns values using the
                MI output syntax, rather than CLI output syntax.
           
              * '-var-list-children''s 'children' result field is now a
                list, rather than a tuple.
           
              * '-var-update''s 'changelist' result field is now a list,
                rather than a tuple.
           
 
    The best way to avoid unexpected changes in MI that might break your
 front end is to make your project known to GDB developers and follow
 development on <gdb@sourceware.org> and <gdb-patches@sourceware.org>.
 

Info Catalog gdb: GDB/MI Compatibility with CLI gdb: GDB/MI gdb: GDB/MI Output Records