I was chatting on #gdb earlier today and it sounds like getting a patch for the d programming language into gdb shouldn't be too bad.  There's a patches mailing list and some kind of paperwork to resolve copyright issues.

Is there any legal/copyright issues that prevent the gdb patch from making it into gdb?  Maybe demangling uses digital mars code?  I'd really love to see complete support for D in gdb.  It's really frustrating to not have it  :(

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Jason House <jason.james.house@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was chatting on #gdb earlier today and it sounds like getting a patch for the d programming language into gdb shouldn't be too bad.  There's a patches mailing list and some kind of paperwork to resolve copyright issues.
>
> Is there any legal/copyright issues that prevent the gdb patch from making it into gdb?  Maybe demangling uses digital mars code?  I'd really love to see complete support for D in gdb.  It's really frustrating to not have it  :(
>

I think pretty much everything DM makes is licensed under either public domain or artistic.  Check out std.demangle and see what the license says.

Jason House wrote:
> I was chatting on #gdb earlier today and it sounds like getting a patch for the d programming language into gdb shouldn't be too bad.  There's a patches mailing list and some kind of paperwork to resolve copyright issues.
> 
> Is there any legal/copyright issues that prevent the gdb patch from making it into gdb?  Maybe demangling uses digital mars code?  I'd really love to see complete support for D in gdb.  It's really frustrating to not have it  :(

The FSF usually wants to own the copyright on the relevant code. That way, it's free to relicense stuff -- though public domain is good enough for that. Also, that way, the FSF has standing in case it has to go to court over the code -- but for public domain code, that isn't an issue, because absolutely everyone is allowed to use that code in any way they want.

Jason House wrote:
> Is there any legal/copyright issues that prevent the gdb patch from
> making it into gdb?  Maybe demangling uses digital mars code?  I'd
> really love to see complete support for D in gdb.  It's really
> frustrating to not have it  :(

I'd be happy to address any licensing issues for a patch to gdb. Just let me know.

Walter Bright Wrote:

> Jason House wrote:
> > Is there any legal/copyright issues that prevent the gdb patch from making it into gdb?  Maybe demangling uses digital mars code?  I'd really love to see complete support for D in gdb.  It's really frustrating to not have it  :(
> 
> I'd be happy to address any licensing issues for a patch to gdb. Just let me know.

I don't know what the past hang-ups were, but I guess that hardly matters. I'll ping the author of the existing gdb patches and try to reinitiate the submission process. Additionally, we still need to figure out what is wrong with -gc and fix it. In the past, I've spent some quality time on #gdb discussing how to fix that. I'm just not knowlegable on the topic. Having the compiler source could help... Do you have any pointers for where to look for writing of debug info?