GDB - lets make D support awesome

[Brad Roberts]

On 11/27/13 1:56 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> On 27 November 2013 20:17, Jerry <jlquinn at optonline.net> wrote:
>> "Iain Buclaw" <ibuclaw at ubuntu.com> writes:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I've created a gdb fork on github and will be giving d-lang support some love
>>> - with the intention of pushing patches back to gdb development as soon as
>>> possible.  The bulk of the work will be done over the next fortnight, but for
>>> some other work (see buglink) will take a couple more months to roll out as
>>> changes on both gdb and compilers need to be aligned up.
>>>
>>> https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=9800
>>>
>>>
>>> If anybody is interesting in helping out.  Would be great to get people
>>> developing, testing, and sending suggestions for features/fixes on it.
>>> Especially users of dmd/ldc to jump on board to ensure that changes done don't
>>> break the existing support that you may have.
>>
>> Hi Ian,  Here's a first bug.
>>
>>   I'm on Ubuntu 12.10 x86_64.  Debugging isn't stepping through the code.
>> Here's a simple example.  This is with dmd 2.064.2 and a fresh clone of
>> your git repo.
>>
>> junk2.d:
>> import std.stdio;
>>
>> void main(string args[]) {
>>      string ss = "hi there";
>>      writeln(ss);
>> }
>>
>
> Hi Jerry,
>
> I believe dmd is only compatible with gdb 7.5.  Likewise gdc-4.7 is
> compatible with 7.5, but not 7.6 (you should use gdc-4.8 or the
> development branch if you want gdb to work properly).
>
> For dmd, someone needs to fix dmd to work with gdb-7.6.
>

This level of if this then thating with versions is pretty painful.  It's something we've got to get 
past somehow (yeah, there's a chicken/egg issue).  It's this sort of area where things don't "just 
work" that puts off developers.