Subject: Re: Debuggers
From: Laurent Charles <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 09:24:33 +0200

Hello,

[email-masked] wrote:
> Could people recommend some graphical shells for gdb.

When I looked for user interface for gdb, I came to the following
conclusions:

My context is to be able to debug mingw32/cygwin32 applications cross
compiled on unix boxes.
I use gdb from cygwin b20 which can directly access to source files with
unix path and name thanks to the cygwin mounts.

- gdb text mode.
Works perfectly. Not very practical and friendly...

- old gdbtk (b19)
Was my favorite as it provides enough buttons and menus for simple debug
sessions, and the console for advanced debugging.
I could not have it running anymore since I switched to b20 (for me copying
cygwin1.dll to cygwinb19.dll does not work)
I liked the fact that I may rather easily customize the interface with tcl
and tk as well.
I regret it.

- emacs
I run emacs compiled with cygwin tools. It works well and fulfill my needs,
as I'm satisfied with typing 'b main', 'r', 'n', etc. on the gdb console to
debug.

- DDD
DDD is very promissing, but today I found it not reliable enough under
win32/cygwin.
This may be because of X11, because of my implementation of X11 (I
currently work with Arlindo's binaries)
<http://dao.gsfc.nasa.gov/software/grads/X11R6.4/>

- xemacs
I compiled xemacs with the cygwin tools. I can use buttons and menu to run
my debug session, and xemacs/cygwin is confortable with debug information
where path are relative to the unix filesystem.
I also have a problem with "fhandler_base::fork_fixup" when I want to have
shells and bash...

DDD and xemacs have the same (or similar?) problem.
They consumes all the CPU when I run them, as if one of their components
was running a polling loop. (some components within X11 ?)
They are usable, but not very confortable, especially if your PC is not too
powerful. xemacs seems better however...

- xemacs NT (without cygwin support)
It is not usable for me as gdb front-end because my source repository is
referenced in the debug information with unix path which xemacs can't
handle. I don't want to "dir" all the source directories.

- Quincy99
Well, I didn't try it much as my goal was to debug code written in another
environment.

As a conclusion, from this experience I would recommend old-good emacs
today.
I'm very interresting in knowing if you folks faced the same problems, or
came to different conclusions.
Thank you.

Regards

--Laurent

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to [email-masked]