(gdbint.info) Requirements

 
 Requirements
 ************
 
    Before diving into the internals, you should understand the formal
 requirements and other expectations for GDB.  Although some of these may
 seem obvious, there have been proposals for GDB that have run counter to
 these requirements.
 
    First of all, GDB is a debugger.  It's not designed to be a front
 panel for embedded systems.  It's not a text editor.  It's not a shell.
 It's not a programming environment.
 
    GDB is an interactive tool.  Although a batch mode is available,
 GDB's primary role is to interact with a human programmer.
 
    GDB should be responsive to the user.  A programmer hot on the trail
 of a nasty bug, and operating under a looming deadline, is going to be
 very impatient of everything, including the response time to debugger
 commands.
 
    GDB should be relatively permissive, such as for expressions.  While
 the compiler should be picky (or have the option to be made picky),
 since source code lives for a long time usually, the programmer doing
 debugging shouldn't be spending time figuring out to mollify the
 debugger.
 
    GDB will be called upon to deal with really large programs.
 Executable sizes of 50 to 100 megabytes occur regularly, and we've
 heard reports of programs approaching 1 gigabyte in size.
 
    GDB should be able to run everywhere.  No other debugger is available
 for even half as many configurations as GDB supports.
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