Could the new gud changes move to a branch?

[Nick Roberts <nick@nick.uklinux.net>]

 > I appreciate whoever is trying to make gud smarter, but unfortunately
 > is stumbling over its own feet far too often.  It has nearly rendered
 > debugging from within Emacs impossible.

Are things better or worse after the changes (2004-04-08) that I've just made?
I've removed some constraints for buffer display but maybe there is too much
freedom now.

 > It is much slower to get started.  It creates three windows, but
 > expects a certain arrangement, so that every once in a while when I
 > hit my breakpoint I am left with only the source window -- and must
 > hit C-x C-b to get back to the *gud* window.

I don't why its slower unless you are starting with a large disassembly view.
What are the three windows?

 > I really like the new disassembly view,...

I've included this as other debuggers have it but I don't use it myself>
What is it useful for?

 >                                      ...but at one point I got myself
 > into a situation where I simply could not switch my buffer away from
 > it.  It seemed to take over my minibuffer or something, and I had to
 > kill the process and restart it.
 > 
 > And lastly it seems that if the input/output window goes away (from
 > hitting C-x 1), and then I switch to the *gud* window and hit "up" or
 > "down", that it redisplays my frame so that only the source window and
 > the input/output window are displayed.  I have to keep switching to
 > the *gud* buffer.
 > 
 > Anyway, it has felt very complicated, and I used to be such a fan of
 > debugging with gdb under Emacs.  So could we go back to the old,
 > simple way until things settle down and the new code is better tested
 > by the author?  

The idea behind making "gdb --annotate=3" the default was to get feedback from
others.  Testing it all myself seems a rather sterile approach.

To get the old, simple way all you need to do is set gud-gdb-command-name to
"gdb --fullname" using customise. I've tried quite hard to keep the old
functionality there. Creating a branch for one elisp file doesn't seem
realistic. 

The (last?) remaining problem for GDB-UI seems to be buffer display and this
should be resolved by the time Emacs is released from trunk. If not, then it
will be quite straightforward to reset the default. In the meantime I would
like to keep it as it is to encourage its use in what, after all, is an
experimental version of Emacs.

 > I think I will start using 21.3 for my debugging.

For debugging emacs in CVS that seems a good idea, in any case.

Nick